St Paul's Dying Testimony in Rome: His Martyrdom

“For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed; for I KNOW WHOM I have

BELIEVED, AND AM PERSUADED THAT HE IS ABLE TO KEEP THAT WHICH I HAVE COMMITTED UNTO HIM AGAINST THAT DAY.” — 2 TlM. I. 12.

“For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing.” — 2 Tim. iv. 6-8.

VIIL

{Preached at the Po?ia del Popolo, April ’ g, 1871.)

2 Tim. i. 12.

“I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day,”

TI 7ITH what more appropriate theme than * * this, could I conclude the series of subjects which have engaged our attention during my brief ministry in this city? These touching words of St Paul have a sacred solemnity attached to them, far exceeding that which belongs in common to all dying utterances. If, as children, we gather in rapt reverential emotion around the couch of a departing parent, and treasure up the sayings of the hour in everlasting remembrance (all the more so, if that parent’s teachings and counsels have formed our unerring guide through life), with what hallowed interest should we, as Christians, gather around the closing hours of one, who, next to the Divine Redeemer he served, was the wisest, greatest, most loving of men; and watch, so to speak, the last throbs of that mighty heart which “stirred the pulses of the world?”

The verse itself, as you already well know, forms part of the final letter the great Apostle dictated. He had now successfully rebutted the first indictment brought against him at Nero’s tribunal; that which, in all probability, consisted of the charge of complicity with incendiaries in the burning of Rome. Even the debased Emperor himself, if he gave a personal hearing to the case, was apparently unable to resist the weight of evidence establishing the prisoner’s innocence. According to St Paul’s own words he was “delivered out of the mouth of the lion,” He was remanded to gaol, to wait the second and final stage of his trial, in which the more important accusation was to be dealt with, of being the leader of a sect whose doctrines were in direct hostility to the national faith, involving treason against the Emperor. Too well did he know, that this major ‘count’ could not, — dared not, — be repelled like the former; and with that calm heroism, which never forsook him in all the trying exigencies of the past, he prepared for the worst. As we have previously noted, he was left, too, at this eventful crisis, well-nigh alone; condemned to mourn in secret and solitude over the dereliction of former associates and friends. Some of these, indeed, at great personal risk, still cheered with an occasional visit the gloom and loneliness of his prison. Others, linked to him in fervid and unabated affection, had all the will openly to avow their attachment and prolong their services, but they were deterred by the almost certain vengeance that would have overtaken them. They would not only have been branded for connivance with the chief of an illicit religion, but they would have shared the odium he had incurred, from the thousands who had been rendered houseless and homeless, in consequence of the crime maliciously laid to his charge. So great was the terror inspired by this first “imperial persecution” against the Christians, that when the Apostle had lately stood in the Basilica of the Palatine, confronted by his judges, he tells us he found himself entirely unsupported. No advocate could be secured to help him in his defence; no companion to cheer him with his sympathy, or to be identified with his cause. “At my first answer,” says he, “no man stood with me, but all men forsook me.” While such was the position, reluctantly assumed, by not a few of those who were still devoted to himself, and still loyal to his Great Master, there were others who had turned basely renegade. From his paternal adjuration to Timothy, “Be thou not ashamed” and by his complimentary reference to Onesiphorus, “He was not ashamed of my chain,” we gather, by implication, that there were others wrho were; — others who had quailed before the coming storm, and abandoned the noble vessel to wrestle, as best it could, among the breakers. Craven-hearted themselves, they had apparently tried to appeal, to the old prisoner’s fears. Now that he had been acquitted on the minor indictment, might he not be prevailed upon to evade the certain consequences’ of the second, by renouncing at once the hated creed, and doing homage to Cassar? Nothing else, nothing less, could save him. Nero had re-enacted, in their full vigour, the intolerant laws which had been repealed by Claudius, and which imperatively required from all an acknowledgment of the reigning Emperor as divine; — demanding the offering of sacrifices in his name, and his being addressed by the title of ‘Lord.’ As St Paul possessed the privilege of “citizenship,” he might on that account the more readily, by a timely recantation, have had his past offences against the State condoned, and have saved himself from condign punishment. When these unworthy advisers, of whom I have spoken, saw the giant power of Rome

arrayed against the infant faith; — that faith itself, apparently, a mere ’ bubble among the breakers, — a brittle reed, with no human possibility of surviving the persecution which had burst upon it in demon fury: might they not be supposed thus to argue with. him, in the moment of their own weakness and apostasy — ‘Why, Paul, persist in the hopeless cause, and prolong the hopeless conflict? Why maintain an unequal struggle for that, which, being in antagonism to the Empire’s belief, and to the will of the Csesars, must, sooner or later, fall to the ground? Why perish in the flames or by the sword, for what is doomed to perish with you?” Nay, would be his reply; ’ disturb me not. Clinging to that faith in which I have lived, and for which I am now ready to die, is no act of wilful, blind fanaticism, — the reckless devotion of a visionary dreamer, to a doomed and desperate cause. I have nobler and loftier anticipations regarding that for which I suffer. I have a grander confidence in the majesty of truth, than to suppose that it can eventually be crushed and overthrown by the base tyranny and hostility of man. I have appealed to a more righteous bar. That God, who sent His Angel to me in the midst of the storm, will not leave me now. He has delivered me, and He will yet deliver me from the lions’ mouth. My enemies may do their worst. They may insult my gray hairs; they may load me with irons; they may doom me to the public exposure of the circus; they may burn my poor body and scatter its ashes on that Tiber; but, “nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day,” ’

Such seems to be the import of these glowing words. May the Apostle’s creed be ours, ours his triumphant faith, that ours at last may be his eternal reward!

We have three topics here suggested for consideration: —

I. A joyful assurance regarding the present. II. A happy persuasion regarding the future. III. The glorious prospect of a Day of final triumph.

I. We have a joyful assicranee regarding the Present. il I know whom I have believed.” The first thing which strikes us in this assertion is its wording. The formula is remarkable. The Apostle does not say, ‘I know what I have believed, but “I know ivlwm I have believed;” or (as that is better rendered in the margin), “I know whom I have trusted” It is not facts, or doctrines, or confessions, or sects, or Churches he speaks of, but his Living Lord: — Ci It is not even Christianity he boasts of, but Christ.” “Detach Christianity,” it has been beautifully said, “from Christ, and it vanishes before your eyes into intellectual vapour. For, it is of the essence of Christianity, that day by day, hour by hour, the Christian should live in conscious, felt, sustained relationship to the ever living Author of his creed and life. Christianity is non-existent apart from Christ; it centres in Christ; it radiates now, as at the first, from Christ. It is not a mere doctrine bequeathed by Him to a world with which He has ceased to have dealings, it perishes outright, when men attempt to abstract it from the living Person of its Founder,” * St Paul felt so; and this dying confession of his faith, is quite what we would have expected from him. The motto of his existence was this — “To me to live is Christ,” — “Christ my life,” Life to him was a hallowed journey with Jesus at his side. He loved Him, and leant upon Him as

* Liddon’s Bampton Lectures, 1866, p, 192.

an earthly friend; like the sunflower opening to the radiant beams, and drooping in sadness and sorrow when that sun is away. Belief, too, was with him, not a mere mental act — the cold calculating subscription of reason. It was the cleaving, trustful homage of a devoted heart; a loyal allegiance of the intellect, the thoughts, the motives, the will, the affections, to the Redeemer, as absolute Lord and ever-present King. Neither parent, nor sister, nor associate in his old Tarsus home, did he ever love like this Jesus of Nazareth. He had tried Him, and he had never found Him to fail. He therefore rejects with scorn the appeals of his timid and treacherous advisers, to purchase immunity from suffering by a base denial of his Lord. That trust of his was no enthusiastic dream. He had not abandoned home or kindred; he had not forfeited all he loved and valued on earth for the bauble of an hour. He had counted the cost: he had tested this “Stone laid in Zion;” he had found Him “a tried stone, a sure foundation.” The heights above might combine with the depths beneath; fiendish men might be confederate with fiendish devils, in trying to shatter his confidence, and blight his hope; but none would be able to separate him from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus his Lord!

“When Persecution’s torrent blaze Wraps the unshrinking martyr’s head: When fade all earthly flowers and bays, When summer friends are gone and fled; Is he alone, in that dark hour, Who owns the Lord of love and power?

“Or, waves there not around his brow
A wand no human arm can wield,
Fraught with a spell no angels know,
His steps to guide, his soul to shield?”

“Alone! yet not alone” — “The Captain of the Lord’s host” was with him — “The LORD,” he says, “stood with me and strengthened me.” It was not in vain that he was then consummating the life-long act of ‘pouring out’ his consecrated existence as a libation on God’s altar.* The Great Angel of the Covenant was there, to accept the offerer and the sacrifice. Perfumed

* Such is the literal meaning and reference in the words, “I am now ready to be offered” (cTrepSo/xcu), — “poured out as a drink-offering,” used only in one other passage in St Paul’s Epistles, Phil. ii. 17.

with other merits than his, the incense-cloud went up with acceptance before God.

And what are the grounds of this confidence in the case of every believer, as well as in that of St Paul? It is trust in a living Saviour, grounded on the meritorious obedience and sufferings of a dying Saviour. As we saw, in last Sabbath’s discourse, there was a time when this great Champion of the faith would have trusted in anything rather than this. There was a time when he would have “trusted in himself that he was righteous, and despised others. * a I was alive,” was the boaster’s challenge, “without the law once” — ‘I thought all was well with me; that I was in a fair way for Heaven; I soared in my religious profession high above my fellows. But, “when the commandment came;” — when the abysmal deeps of my own defilement and depravity yawned beneath me, and the exceeding breadth of God’s law was disclosed to my illuminated vision, “sin revived, and I died.” I who once fancied myself a living man, pronounced myself spiritually dead!* Surely, if ever the child of Adam could enter Heaven on the ground of his own doings, it was he who penned our text; — whose life-motto was this, “always abounding in the work of the Lord.” Think of his graces as a Christian, his success as a minister, his labours as an Apostle. Who more than he had earned his crown? who more than he could take his stand at the bar of God loaded with merit? How different! As we described morefully on a previous occasion, all his own once boasted righteousness is like the yielding ice beneath his feet. It melted before the blaze of God’s throne of purity. In the present hour of approaching dissolution, just when this mighty Tree in God’s forest seemed (like the birchen trees we have all seen in our own land in their golden autumn tints) grandest in decay; just as his soul is about to wing its eagle-flight to the spirit-world, “Christ and Him crucified” is clung to with an ever fonder, holier trust. — “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners!”

Have we the same blessed assurance and joy in contemplating the Work and Person of

Jesus? Lost, and perishing, and undone by nature, have we been able to cast ourselves, from first to last, on the merits and righteousness of our Surety-Redeemer? Have we sten in Him, the true “Rainbow of Emerald,” proclaiming in its blended tints and sublime harmonies, that while “justice and judgment” are the habitation of God’s throne, “mercy and truth” may go continually before His face; for in the doing and dying of Christ the lustre of a sublime vindication encircles every attribute of His nature, and every requirement of His law? And exulting in the completed atonement of Jesus, can we share, in some feeble measure, the Apostle’s joy in contemplating a personal, living, loving Saviour? Christ in our nature; susceptible of every human sympathy; bending over us with His pitying eye; entering with infinite tenderness into every human want and woe; drawing nigh in all the dark experiences of life, as He did to the disciples on their midnight sea, and whispering the calming words, “It is I,” (or rather, “I am”), “be not afraid.” ‘I am the Living One; I am the controlling One (aye, and to “as many as I love “); I am the rebuking One, and the chastening One!’ Let us think of this, not as a cold abstraction, or beautiful phantasm, but as a glorious truth, a sublime and comforting verity. He is ever with us! When the gates of the morning are opened; swifter than the arrowy light, His footstep of love is at our threshold. When the gates of the evening revolve on their silent hinges, and day merges and melts into twilight, He is there! Amid the bustle of life, in” the loud stunning tide of human care,” He is there! By the lonely sickbed, when the glow of health has left our cheek, and the dim night-lamp casts its flickering gleam on our pillow, He is there! When the King of terrors has entered our dwellings; — when we are seated amid the awful stillness of the death-chamber, listening in vain for the music of cherished voices, hushed for the forever of time, He is there! In all these diverse experiences, He draws near in touching tenderness, saying, “Fear not, I am He that liveth and was dead; and behold I am alive for evermore,”” Fear not: for I have redeemed thee,

I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour.”

II. Let us proceed, as we purposed, to consider the Apostle s happy persuasion regarding the future. — u I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him!’ St Paul exults in Christ’s sufficiency in the past; He rejoices in Christ’s love in the present; and now, the future, with all its unrevealed secrets, he commits to the keeping of that same Saviour God. “He is able to keep” Blessed name, blessed title! Christ the Keeper of His people; their Shelter, their Citadel, their Stronghold; where He keeps them “in perfect peace.” He, the heavenly Casket, holding in sacred custody all they confide to Him; — they, committing their souls to Him in well-doing — committing them to be justified, committing them to be sanctified; made meet for life and for death, for time and for eternity.* And there is no limit to this deposit. All that belongs to them, — all their cares and trials, sorrows and joys, crosses and losses; the minutest accidents of their lot, as well as the momentous crisis-hours of their history. He asks them to cast, not some of their cares, or their weightier cares, but all their cares. In Old Testament language, “He puts their tears into His bottle,” He counts their sorrows, drop by drop, tear by tear. “He keeps them as the apple of His eye;” what touches tftem, touches Him!

Are we ready to subscribe also to this second article in St Paul’s dying creed? Are we prepared to say, “I am persuaded He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him?” With an unknown future before us, can we exult in the thought, that though unknown to us, it is known to Him, and in His hands we can joyfully leave it? It may be different in-

* u The metaphor here is that of a pledge deposited, and the depositor trusting the depositary.” — Alford’s Greek Test.

deed, in one respect, with us, from what it was with the great Apostle. To him, the future was at this time a very limited one. One brief day and night might embrace it all. He was living at any moment expecting the summons, “Come up hither.” But whether life with us may be long or short, how joyous to be able to feel that all (yes, all) is in His hands. Every arrangement regarding our temporal lot, and, better still, the deathless interests of the soul which He has purchased with His own blood. In giving Himself, He has given the pledge of every other blessing. And mark the beautiful combination in the text. It is not only Christ “able to keep;” — (the consciousness of having a strong city in which salvation is appointed for walls and bulwarks;) but within this citadel, we know Him who is the Keeper. He who is able to keep me, is a known, a tried, a trusted Saviour. An earthly stronghold may have massive walls and fortifications; but these, in themselves, are soulless, inanimate. They may have been built by the enemy. I may have no interest in being within them, or in retaining them; they are only fled to as a temporary shelter; not one living being I care for, may be there to cheer me. How different would be my feelings, if within that Castle’s walls there were those who knew me — beloved friends, or brave comrades! How thrilling was that moment — the most touching in all our Indian rebellion — when that terrible fortress, within which hope, once and again sickened and died, was entered by the band of relieving heroes, amid the joyful tears of the beleaguered garrison, and brother and friend were locked in mutual embrace! Such is the believer’s Gospel Citadel. Christ is a living Redeemer, a “living kinsman,” He is not only “a stronghold in the day of trouble,’’ but “He knoweth them that trust in Him” (Nahum i. 7). In leaning on His arm, it is not like the staff of the Pilgrim, a welcome support, but yet a dead, pulseless, lifeless thing, that can respond to no sympathy, and solace no sorrow. But it is the arm of a Friend: “Who is this that cometh up from the wilderness leaning upon her beloved?” Let us fearlessly entrust the keeping of our souls to Him in well-doing, as unto a faithful

IN ROME, — CONCL US/ON. 333

Creator. Whatever be uncertain in the future, let us commend to His better wisdom, saying, “Not my will, but Thy will,” “The Lord is thy keeper; the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: He shall preserve thy soul.”

III. We come now to the Apostle’s glorious prospect of a final day of triumph. “Against THAT day? u That day.” When adverting to the same phrase last Sabbath, in his prayer for Onesiphorus, we noted the reiterated references made by St Paul to that significant era. We need not further dwell on its many suggestive themes for consideration. Let us only put the practical question, Are we in any similar measure “looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God?” Have we that day habitually before us, as it evidently was before the faithful of the Apostolic age? Are we longing for it, as the sailor for his port, or the Pilgrim for his home? When a brother or friend is expected from a distant land, how eagerly do we look for him!

How ardently does affection listen to every footfall on the street, or gaze wistfully on every sail as it appears on the distant line of blue sea? How does the mother deck out the chamber for her long absent son, with all the lavish ingenuity which love can devise, to give him a fond welcome? Are we thus longing for the return of this “Chiefest among ten thousand?” Are our hearts swept, and garnished, and beautified for His reception? Are we ready to echo the exulting words of the Psalmist — “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord: for He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth?” To those who cannot join in the Apostle’s triumphant words — to those who are unmeet and unprepared for “that day,” there is surely deep solemnity and awe in the prospect of it. St Paul, in another place, speaks of it “overtaking as a thief,” It is “at midnight” the cry will be heard, “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh,” — the hour He is least looked for and least expected.

Brethren, it is not for us to know the times and seasons; when that trumpet shall sound, it is not for us presumptuously to predicate. But the day of our death is virtually to us ’ the day of Christ’s coming;’ and as such, He may come soon; He must come at some time; He will, come unexpectedly. When the river runs smoothest, — no dimple on its surface, — rock and tree and mountain mirrored in its bosom; — how often then is the waterfall at hand; and maddened into thunder, that river takes its leap into the dark caldron-depths below? So, often, when life appears most placid, — its sun shining, its green banks carpeted with flowers, its stream undimpled by one rippling wave, the great cataract of death is nigh, and with one giant bound it plunges into the abyss of eternity! How is it with us? Can we say with St Paul in this same Epistle, in the prospect of that day, “I am now ready?” Are we ready? Are we always ready? Is the step between us and death changed into the step between us and glory? the hour of our departure into the hour of victory? u Behold He cometh!” Would there be music in that

word to us? Would we be ready with the response, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him?” or would it rather find us on our knees with the reply, f Not yet, not yet! Tarry, Lord! tarry! Yet a few more days, a few more weeks, a few more years — I am yet unprepared for the reckoning. He cometh! but for me, there is no pardon in His voice; for me, there is no mercy in His footstep. He cometh! but it will be “with flaming fire.”’ What is it that makes the thought of that day, and the meeting with the Judge, fearful? It is the sense of sin unforgiven. We never can endure to face a God unreconciled. So long as sin is not cancelled, and pardon through Christ neither sought nor secured; so long as passion is left to uncontrolled dominion, and holiness of heart and life are undesired and unattained; then, rather than breathe the Apostolic prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus,” what would we not do to evade His glance? where would we not rush to avoid that withering rejection and disownment; gazing on injured Goodness and unrequited Love? God grant, that all of us may be able to “know whom we have believed” as Christ the Saviour, and then we shall not be ashamed to meet Him as Christ the Judge. If, I repeat, the hour of our departure from the world be really and virtually to us the hour of Christ’s coming may we seek, now, sou To live, that when our summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, that moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death; We go, not like the quarry slave at night Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustam’d and sooth’d By an unfaltering trust, approach our grave Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams,’5

With the words of our text, the great drama of St Paul’s great life closes. He has been well likened, at this hour, to the conqueror in the adjoining Capitol, waiting for the crown to be placed on his brow. The curtain falls, as he utters the dying testimony we have now been considering; and we are only left to imagine the rest :■ — The final trial in Nero’s Basilica; the condemnation (if tradition can be trusted); the scourging, the few remaining days in the Mamertine, before passing to a more righteous judgment-seat; the farewell glimpses of beloved friends, among whom we can, only by doubtful surmise, include Luke, Timothy, Clemens, Linus, Pudens, Onesimus, Tychicus, Aristarchus, and possibly other representatives from the Palatine and Trastevere. We can further picture the band of Roman soldiers hurrying outside the Ostian Gate with their unresisting prisoner; wistful eyes following, in mute, expressive agony; the silence broken only by sobs and tears that dare not be repressed. Then the arrival at that solitary spot in the naked Campagna, which still retains the tradition of his beheading. Like his dear Lord before him, he has willingly borne his Cross “without the gate.” The fatal weapon descends; and Angels are ready to conduct the soul of the glorious hero to Paradise. In the simple words of his beloved friend and contemporary, Clement, il So he departed from the world, and went to that holy place, having shown himself the noblest pattern of endurance,” Even though we utterly reject the baseless fiction of the Tre Foutane, we may accept the beautiful truth it symbolises and adumbrates; that death was not — could not be, the close of a life like his. Though his lips were now irrevocably sealed, Fountains of “grace, and mercy, and peace” (Heaven’s threefold benediction he had so often uttered), were left to well up, fresh and copious as ever, to bless, in all coming centuries, that world he had made perpetual debtor by his teaching and example. A glorious sun had set, — vanished behind the horizon in golden glory; but the mountain-peaks of all ages are still lighted up with its undying radiance: “He being dead, yet speaketh.” The saddest moment to the mourning Church on earth (for she had sustained no such loss since the departure of her Great Head) ushered the martyred Apostle into the blissful and merited scene of recompense for all his sufferings and labours. What one so often reads, in the rude inscriptions traced by fond hands on the tombs in the Catacombs, had in his case their truest, fullest, most sacred meaning and significance, “In Christo in pace “: — “The pains of death are past: Labour and sorrow cease: And life’s long warfare closed at last, His soul is found in peace.”

Whether, indeed, he really sleeps in the spot where tradition has deposited his ashes, we cannot positively affirm. But the rearers of the magnificent mausoleum, which, with its aureole of lighted lamps, enshrines his memory, have selected, at all events, the most appropriate of epitaphs in those simple words we have more than once spoken of in their connection with that place —

“TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST, AND TO DIE
IS GAIN.”

Following, as we have been endeavouring to do (we trust not without interest), the footsteps of the great Apostle in this ancient capital of the world, may it be our joy to meet him at last in the true “Eternal City? — “the city which hath foundations,” and there testify the debt which, under God, we owe to him in common with the millions on millions who on earth have read, and prayed, and rejoiced over his utterances. It was one of the illustrious Chrysostom’s bright anticipations of Heaven (may we be able in some feeble measure to participate in the prospect): “If not standing near him, yet see him we certainly shall, glistening near the throne of the King, where the cherubim sing the glory; wThere the seraphim are flying; there we shall see PAUL, as a chief and leader of the choir of the Saints, and shall enjoy his generous love,”

I can only appropriately conclude with the final ascription of the now sainted Apostle, addressed to believers in ROME, as contained in the closing verses of his own Epistle to the Romans (xvi. 25, 27): —

“Now to Him

THAT IS OF POWER TO STABLISH YOU

ACCORDING TO MY GOSPEL,

AND THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST:

To God only wise be glory, through jesus christ, for ever.

Amen.”