lessly in his captivity, and he was guarded by four soldiers, relieved every three hours, who must answer with their lives for his safe custody. At this very moment he lay between two of the soldiers, with one of his arms fettered to each of them, while the two others kept strict watch at the gate, a little way apart from one another. But lo! when all was quiet, when no one suspected any thing, a glow of heavenly light shone of a sudden through the darkness of the prison, and an angel of the Lord stood by the wretched bed. He pushed Peter's side and woke him, with the words: "Rise up quickly!" Then the fetters dropped from his hands and he rose mechanically. "Gird up your garments and bind your sandals to your feet," continued the angel; and when the Apostle had obeyed, he added: "Throw on your mantle and follow me!" Peter did so, thinking all the while that it was a vision, and that he should soon find himself upon his bed and in his fetters again. They passed unobserved by the first and second watch, and reached the iron gate that opened into the street, unchallenged. The gate opened of itself; they went out, turned round the corner, walked along one street together, and all at once the angel was gone! It was only now that Peter returned to full consciousness, and said: "Now I know for certain that the Lord hath sent his angel to rescue me from the violence of Herod and the people's thirst for blood." So he hastened along the way that led to the house of Mary the mother of John, surnamed Mark, where a number of the faithful were assembled in prayer. He knocked at the door, and the maid Rhoda came at the summons; but before she opened she asked who it was that came at such an untimely hour. When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so delighted that she forgot to open the door for him, and ran in and told them all that Peter was standing outside. They said she was raving, but she persisted in saying: "Indeed, indeed, he is there!" "Then it must be his guardian angel," they said; "it can surely bode no good!" Meanwhile Peter knocked again and yet again; and when at last they opened the door, there to the amazement of them all stood Peter himself. He motioned them with his hand to keep silence, and told them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison. Then he told them to inform James and all the brethren who were not present of what had taken place, and departed himself elsewhere.

Picture the deadly terror of the soldiers when the morning broke and they found the prisoner had vanished without a

trace! When the king sent for Peter and heard that he was gone, he had the sentinels thrown into chains, tried, and executed. Little did he think that the avenging hand of God was already stretched over his own head! It was but a few weeks afterwards, when he had left Jerusalem for his magnificent residential city of Cæsarea-Palestina, that he received a Phoenician embassy there. He had been violently incensed against Tyre and Sidon, and had forbidden the export of corn and other necessaries of life from his kingdom to these cities. The Phoenicians, who were reduced to great perplexities by this measure, found means of bribing Blastus, the king's first chamberlain and favorite, to espouse their cause, and then had begged for peace. On a certain day, therefore, Herod granted their embassy a solemn public audience, and announced his resolution. Seated on his throne and clad in his robes of state, he delivered an address to them in the presence of the people, and laid down the conditions of peace. The splendor of his appearance impressed all present with a sense of his incomparable majesty, and the substance of what he said so delighted them that he had no sooner finished than they burst into rapturous applause, and the blasphemous ciy echoed from end to end of the quadrangle, "It is a god that speaks, and not a man!" Herod did not reject this sacrilegious flattery. So the angel of the Lord smote him, and a few days afterwards he sank under an equally loathsome and painful disease of the bowels. .

This angel is already known to us from the narratives of the Old Testament, where he appears as an explanation, or rather a description, of sudden sickness and death.1 For the rest we find the occasion and manner of Herod's death described almost identically in Josephus. This historian however knows nothing of an embassy from the Phoenicians and a public audience granted them; but speaks of games in honor of the emperor Claudius, at which the king, when the first rays of the sun shone upon his silvered robe, was greeted by his sycophants as a god. Five days afterwards he was a corpse, having suffered ever-increasing agonies meanwhile. This confirmation gives a certain guarantee for the truth of the story we are considering, which stands alone in the book of Acts. The account of Peter's rescue is of course fabulous, nor does it seem to have occurred to the writer how unworthy of God it would be to make victims of the unoffending sentinels. But that James was slain and Peter imprisoned

1 See vol. ii. pp. 29, 291.

may be accepted as fact; and, instead of the messenger from heaven who gives the latter his liberty, we may suppose that the death of the persecutor, which so often opened prison doors, or the intercession of some friend, or any other of the hundred chances that might give a favorable turn to things, resulted in Peter's regaining his freedom.

We may remark in passing that Peter's message to the absent brethren contains the first mention of James the son of Joseph, the brother of Jesus, as a distinguished member of the community at Jerusalem. We shall presently meet him again in this capacity, together with Peter.

But then a great development will already have taken place, of which at present the primitive community had not even a presentiment, against which it ranged itself in vain, by which the cause of Jesus was shaken free from the ceremonial restraints of the Mosaic law and the national exclusiveness of the Israelitish prophets.

Upon this important subject we will now fix our attention.

CHAPTER III.

STEPHEN AND PHILIP.

MATTHEW XVII. 1-9; ACTS VI.-VIII. 8, 26-40, XI. 19-21; MATTHEW XV. 21-28.1

Na certain day, says a celebrated legend that rose

the age, took his

At

three chosen friends, Peter, James, and John, and went up a lofty mountain to be alone with them. Here in the sight of the three his form was transfigured, his countenance shone like the sun, and his garments glittered like the light. the same moment they saw two figures at his side in the like heavenly glory, and recognized them at once as Moses and Elijah, who were conversing with Jesus. Then Peter spoke, and said to Jesus: "Lord! it is well for us to be here. it please thee I will make three booths: one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah." But before he had finished speaking the shining cloud that girds the Deity had descended upon the mountain-top and streamed over the three figures I Luke ix. 28-36; Mark ix. 2-10, vii. 24-30.

If

till they seemed to melt into the glow and were lost to sight, while the voice of God sounded from the cloud to Peter and the others: "This is my beloved Son; hear him!" Then in a moment all was gone; but there was no doubt of whom the voice had spoken, for when the disciples looked round they could see none but Jesus.

8

Even without the additional light which the comparison with an Old Testament precedent1 throws upon the details of this picture, its general purport can hardly be mistaken; while the importance attached to it may be gathered from a distinct reference being made to it in the latest book of the Bible, the second Epistle of Peter. In the presence of his friends and disciples Jesus is transfigured, that is to say, he is recognized by them as the Messiah; but the lawgiver and the representative prophet still stand in undiminished glory at his side. And Peter, together with James and John, wishes to preserve all these three forces, - the Jewish law and national expectation no less than the Gospel, - and to build tents for them all. Vain is the wish, and vain the project! The divine will makes itself known, and Moses and Elijah disappear, leaving Jesus alone singled out as the son of God's good pleasure. There should not and could not be any permanent alliance between the new religious truth and the ancient practices of external piety prescribed by the Law, or the ancient conceptions of a proud, unloving nationality."

But the Apostles had not yet perceived this incompatibility. It was outside their circle and without their help that this great step was made, as we shall see in this and the following chapters. It is not without reason that Peter, James, and John, whom the evangelical tradition represents as the chosen friends of Jesus, and who were held in the highest estimation at Jerusalem and elsewhere as the pillars of the community, — it is not without reason that these three men are specially indicated as wishing to retain both Moses and Elijah, while Peter, pre-eminently the Apostle of the Jews, is made their spokesman." James the son of Joseph we must probably regard as virtually taking the place of James the son of Zebedee, who was cut off early. Nor must we

overlook the statement made by all the three Evangelists

1 Exodus xxiv. 15, 16, 18.

See pp. 49, 50.

22 Peter i. 16b.-18.

Psalm ii. 7; Isaiah xlii. 1; and Deuteronomy xviii. 15; compare p. 119. 5 See p. 213. 6 See pp. 211, 232, 292 ff.

Galatians ii. 7, 9, 12; 1 Corinthians i. 12.

though Mark has it in the wrong place that the disciples were very much alarmed by what took place. Lake says that terror came upon them when Moses and Elijah went into the cloud and disappeared; while according to Matthew, when the voice from heaven had corrected their first intention, they fell down to the ground in fear, but were touched, raised up, and encouraged by Jesus.

2

We may mention, incidentally, that here again' Luke represents the vision as a more palpable fact than the others make it, though even Mark speaks of the whiteness of the garments of Jesus, which shone as no bleacher upon earth could make them. The third Gospel further speaks of the mountain, as if a real and well-known mountain were intended; and in the same spirit the later tradition, overlooking the emblematic character of the story, pointed out Tabor as the mount of the Transfiguration. Luke also tells us that Jesus went up to pray, and adds the not very appropriate comments that the disciples were drowsy, though they kept themselves awake; that Peter did not know what he was saying, an unlucky touch which reappears in Mark, — and that the Apostle did not speak until the representatives of the old dispensation were on the point of departing. Finally, Luke stands alone in saying that when Moses and Elijah appeared in glory they discoursed of the death upon the cross which Jesus must endure at Jerusalem; and though this trait does not at all astonish us, especially in Luke,3 it is quite foreign to the main conception of the scene.

This conception is that the authority of the Law and the prophets must be annulled. But of course this could not be done suddenly, nor without a conflict. It was a question which only came forward gradually, and could not be settled without many a strain in the bosom of the community.

Let us listen to what is told us of the origin of the first of these collisions between the old and the new spirit!

So far from being appalled or discouraged by the mortal peril that threatened them and the maltreatment they had experienced, the Apostles were but stimulated to continue their preaching of Jesus as the Messiah both in the temple and at home; and consequently the numbers of the faithful still increased. If only this outward success had been accompanied by undiminished brotherly affection and unbroken harmony! But alas! the season of first love had all too

1 See p. 120.

3 See pp. 465, 475, 494, 495.

2 See p. 261.

* See p. 498.