The Closing Scene

“Servant of God, well done!
Rest from thy loved employ;
The battle fought — the victory won,
Enter thy Master’s joy.”

“He stood upon the brink of the grave, calm and unmoved, like the conqueror in the Capitol, waiting for the crown to be placed upon his brow.” — Blunt’s Lectures on St Paul, vol. ii. p. 250.

e have now come to the last chapter in the history of the Great Apostle. We could have wished that more particulars had been left to complete the account of so eventful and interesting a life; but these materials are very few. As Irenseus says, “Luke, at the close of his history, leaves us thirsting for more.” Indeed, we are left very much to fill up in our own minds how he “finished his course with joy.” Why his faithful friend and biographer records so little regarding these concluding years, we cannot say. AVe have no cause, however, to complain. We have rather reason for gratitude, that the Holy Spirit moved him to transcribe so fully and faithfully what throws so much light on the infant Church, and the doings of her brightest Luminary.

There is a question which has much divided learned men, as to whether Paul was only once or twice imprisoned in Rome. Some think that his condemnation and death took place immediately after the events recorded in last chapter; others, we think with better grounds, have supposed that he was acquitted at this his first trial; that, on being set at liberty, he travelled to the extreme west of the Roman empire, and preached the gospel in Spain; also that he visited Asia Minor, and other churches in the East; and after being imprisoned a second time in Rome, he was sentenced to death, probably in the last year of the reign of Nero.*

We are left to imagine the scene of Paul’s first trial before the emperor. It has been supposed to have taken place about March, 61, — the same year when the Roman arms in Britain received a signal repulse under the brave Queen Boaclicea, and our own London was burnt to ashes by the infuriated legions of Nero.t Although such causes as that of the Apostle were sometimes heard by the consular-legate, most frequently the emperor himself was in the habit of presiding at them in his imperial palace on the Palatine Hill. We may think, then, of Nero, the monarch of the civilised world, himself a brutalised heathen, seated at the end of a gorgeous hall, “lined with the precious marbles of Egypt, and of Lybia,”J in raiment of purple and gold, surrounded with his twelve lictors, courtiers, and assessors. His face at one time had been

* Much diversity of opinion exists about the probable direction of Paul’s concluding journeyings, (and all must be conjecture where there is nothing but brief hints in his epistles to guide us.) We have adhered to the order adopted by Messrs Howson and Conybeare in their closing chapters.

t Lewin. Howson and Conybeare. handsome, but it now bore the marks of youthful profligacy. Suetonius adds, that the size of his body was considerable, his neck thick, and his eyes grey and dull. Before him stood, calm and unmoved, confident in his own integrity, and in the grace and strength of his God, the Jewish prisoner. He was loaded with fetters; but, captive as he was, with the almost certainty of a cruel death before him, he would not for worlds change places with the miserable being before him, whose hands were already, at the age of twenty-five or thirty, so deeply stained with blood. Paul might well have trembled in his presence; but he knew that there was One at his side “mightier than the mightiest;” and even should the ravenous “lion” be permitted to tear him in pieces, it would only be the sooner to receive his heavenly crown.

The witnesses would be called. Doubtless many had by this time been gathered from all parts of the East where Puil had sought to proclaim the gospel. The Sanhedrim, also, would not be idle. It is remarkable that Josephus, in his History, mentions that the high priest at Jerusalem, Ishmael, and many of the leading Jews, were at this time in Rome. He speaks of the main object of their journey being with reference to the building of a wall in the temple. May it not have more likely been, that they had in view the ruin of St Paul?* These collected Jews would doubtless have some chosen Roman orator hired to plead their cause; nor would it have been difficult to make out a strong case against the Apostle. They might have urged before Nero, that the prisoner was not only a ringleader of a new sect, but a subverter of his own power; and

* Lewia. Josephus’ Antiq. book xx. chap. 8.

that this Jesus whom he preached, aspired to the temporal sovereignty of Judea, and of the world.

We may imagine the Apostle rising calmly in the midst of the court to make his reply. Many of his judges would understand Greek, and in this language probably he would address them. What he said, we know not. There may have been solemn things spoken home to their consciences. Like Felix, some may have trembled; but we fear, at least, that the monarch, on whom he kept his eye, only despised, and perished! So far as we could judge, everything combined to make Paul’s a hopeless case. His enemies were many and powerful, their pleas were strong in such an ear as Nero’s, and, above all, the influence exercised by his base queen, over whom Ishmael had great power, must have combined to seal the Apostle’s fate. Moreover, Nero did not require to abide, as in our courts of law, by the opinion of the jury; he could pronounce what sentence he chose. His partiality for cruelty was too well known to give such a prisoner much hope of mercy; more especially when we think how the holy life and holy words of the Apostle must have rebuked the crimes of the judge. But He who turns the hearts of kings, and queens, and rulers, “even as he turns the rivers of waters,” did, by His overruling providence, avert the threatened stroke. Paul once more is liberated — he is dismissed from the bar, and is free to preach the gospel where he pleases!

New thoughts of missionary zeal begin to fill his aged bosom. His first desire is to go to the East, and revisit some of the churches there, which seemed to stand in need of his presence and counsel.

There were many of these which he had never yet seen; and from the wish he expresses in his letter, both to Philemon and the Philippians, we may well believe he would turn his steps immediately towards Macedonia and the churches in Asia Minor. How joyful would be his meeting with his Philippian friends! But it must only have been a passing “salutation,” as he was anxious to hasten to other places still farther east. What he did visit, we know not. Possibly he would direct his course for ‘the first time to Colosse. We may picture his probable interview with the wealthy but Christian-hearted Philemon. Who can tell but Onesimus his old slave may have joined them, and, under the same roof, three, so different from one another, may have rejoiced now in being all “one in Christ Jesus!” From Colosse, on his way to Ephesus, it is more than likely he would pause at Laodicea and Hierapolis.

The year following his acquittal at Rome, he made out his long-thought-of journey to Spain. Clemens, his own contemporary and fellow-labourer, tells us that “he went to the utmost bounds of the west.” In going thither, it is most probable he would avoid the “perils of false brethren,” by committing himself again to the waters of the Mediterranean. The persecutions of Nero were at their height, and he would feel that it were “better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men.” Many vessels were continually plying between the east and the modern Marseilles, and from thence he would easily find his way by ship to Spain. How long he remained in the Peninsula we cannot even guess; most probably two years were spent there preaching the gospel of his Lord.

Some, indeed, have thought that the Apostle went further west still, and that the shores of our own island, and even the streets of our own London, were trodden by the “footsteps of St Paul!” Early writers in the fourth and fifth centuries speak of such a visit. However pleasing it would be for us to think of this as the case, of course it is a mere matter of conjecture. Claudia, whose name is mentioned by the Apostle in 2 Tim. iv. 21, has been supposed by some to have been the daughter of Caractacus, King of Britain, who was brought prisoner to Rome in a. d. 51, and who, with her grandfather Bran, was converted to Christianity. We have already mentioned that Pomponia Grsecina, the wife of Aulus Plautius, the first Roman governor of Britain, was accused of having become a convert to a “strange foreign superstition,” in other words, of being a Christian, and probably through her instrumentality the daughter of the British king and others were led to receive the truth. It is also said that the aged Briton Bran afterwards returned to his native shores, along with other converts, and that by them the religion of Jesus was taught to the Pagan savages. There is much, however, in this of tradition, and which it becomes us to receive with caution.*

If the dates we have already given be at all correct, we may imagine it was in the year 66 that our Apostle again returned from the west, and sailed back to Ephesus. It was a journey, or rather visit of sorrow. He found (according to the fears he had many years before expressed to the elders who met him at Miletus), that wolves had entered among his sheep. False teachers, among whom were Hymeneus and Philetus, were

* See Cave; and Apostles (Tract Society).

scattering tho seeds of deadly error, and multitudes of his converts had thereby been led astray.

The epistles to Timothy and Titus were written about this time. From them we gather that his present visit to the east was a short one. His spirit seems to nave been greatly bowed down by the errors and heresies which had sprung up like noxious weeds in a garden which once promised so well. We may believe he had lost none of his ardour and zeal in his Heavenly Master’s cause, but his strength was not so able, at the age of nearly seventy, to cope with the hardships he once could encounter. We may feel assured, had it been so, he would not have employed others to grapple with these errors, but would have been on the field himself with the same “sword of the Spirit” he had so often wielded in the battles of the Lord.

There is something touching in the message which he sends during these later years of his life to bring back “the cloak that he had left behind him at Troas.” * It had been his companion, perhaps, amid the cutting winds of the Pisidian mountains, and now, again, in the prospect either of a new sea-voyage, or the sadder one of a damp cell, he felt his aged frame could not dispense so easily as once it might with these aids to artificial warmth. He had left it in summer at Troas, with the prospect of getting it again on a return, which he never accomplished. What the books and parchments were he speaks of along with the cloak, we are not told; probably copies of the Law and the Prophets, with, perhaps, the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which were the only two now written. The parchments may have been copies of his own epistles,

* 2 Tim. iv. 13.

with, perhaps, “the diploma of his Roman citizen-Leaving Timothy to contend with the errors of the false teachers I have spoken of at Ephesns, Panl seems to have gone first to Macedonia, and then to Crete. If he returned to Ephesus, it was to leave it finally for Rome, taking Corinth on his way. It was when at Macedonia he wrote his first Epistle to Timothy, in which he gives him various directions about the government of the church at Ephesus, denounces and opposes the heretical teachers and doctrines, and adds many faithful counsels to his “own son” individually, and to ministers of Christ in every age.

Soon after writing this epistle, we find the Apostle in the island of Crete. It is more than probable the gospel had been introduced there before Paul’s visit. This we are given to infer from the Epistle to Titus. Moreover, you will remember, at the day of Pentecost, Cretans are spoken of among the number of those who received the gift of tongues, and heard Peter preach the gospel. It is not unlikely that some of these may have carried the glad tidings from Jerusalem to their own island. The Apostle visited them now along with Titus, probably remaining for some months, and leaving this companion of his missionary tour behind him on his departure. Paul wrote to him afterwards (as we have just found him doing to Timothy) a letter of directions about the government of the church in that island; also, in order to silence some opposition which had arisen to his teaching. He seems to have sent it from Ephesus just when about to leave that city for the west. In

* Lewin.

reading the epistle, you will see that Paul asks Titus to come and join him at Nicopolis, where he was to “spend the winter.” This town in Epirus, in Greece, was built by Augustus in memory of the famous battle of Aetium, which he gained over Mark Antony, on 2d September, b. c. 31. It was situated on a narrow isthmus; a temple to Apollo marked the spot where the tent of Augustus had been pitched, and every five years famous games were celebrated close by. It is notable to us, as the last scene of Paul’s public labours before his final trial. It has been supposed, indeed, that it was here he was arrested, and sent again to imprisonment at Rome — arriving there very possibly at the beginning of the year.*

There is surely something touching about this journey! The old man — with furrowed brow and feeble steps — with few friends to cheer him, and some of those few deserting him in the hour of danger: — Demas left him; Crescens “departed to Galatia;” even Titus went (though this may have been at Paul’s request) to Dalmatia. One, at least, however, we know remained faithful to the last — Luke the evangelist, the writer of his history, followed with trusty fidelity his aged father in the faith, to comfort him in his coming sorrows, and share his cross. It was indeed an honourable office to accompany such a man, who had now for a quarter of a century been the bold ambassador of Christ. During all that period he had never grown weary in his Lord’s service. What was said of John Knox, might with truth have been said of him,” he

* Neander and others have supposed that his visit to Spain was after his

eastern journey; that there he was seized and taken prisoner to Rome

Neander’s Planting, p. 344.

never feared the face of man.” The thongs and the scourge, the stocks of the prison, the rude language and buffetings of soldiers, the rage of mobs, tedious journeys, four shipwrecks, — all he had endured with heroical equanimity, and, if it pleased God, he was willing to endure tenfold more.

He once more enters Rome! We shall presently note how changed the outward aspect of the city was since he last was there, — whole streets and buildings had been swept away and restored, and new palaces were looking down from the heights of the Palatine. Among these new buildings, conspicuous must have been the golden palace of Nero, with his statue in the vestibule, 120 feet in height, the golden stalls for his chariot horses, and the porticoes and columns extending a mile in length. “It was richly overlaid,” says Suetonius, “with gold, and everywhere adorned with the dazzling glitter of precious stones, and mother-ofpearl. In the vaulted roofs of his banqueting rooms were several little tables of ivory, so contrived as to turn round and scatter flowers, and hollow pipes to shower down sweet-scented oils upon the guests. His principal dining-room was round, and in perpetual motion, day and night, like the celestial sphere. His baths continually flowing, either with sea-water, or else fed from the sulphureous springs of Tivoli.” But why, after all, linger in the description of these? They were little to the man who, we arc supposing, was passing near them, and who had in his view “a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”

Imagine Paul, then, amid what Horace calls “the smoke, the riches, and the noise of Rome,” passing on, as in former years, chained to a soldier by the wrist, to the place of confinement. Wo found that, during his previous imprisonment, he had received kind and considerate treatment. He was allowed then to live in his own hired lodging, and, though chained, was permitted to see what friends he chose. Now he was confined to a dungeon, and treated as a malefactor.

The Mamertine prison is still pointed out as the scene of his incarceration. Its position is not far from the large pillars which occupy the foreground in our picture of the “Roman Forum.” It is considered the oldest relic and building in the city, deriving its name from Ancus Martius, the fourth king of ancient Rome. It is reached, in the present day, by a vault under the Church of St Giuseppe, where the visitor finds himself in two dismal cells; the lower is only six and a half feet in height, and the stones of which it is built are “strangely united by cramps of iron.” * There was a circular opening or aperture above, through which prisoners, on their condemnation, were lowered, either to starve or be strangled to death. Jugurtha suffered the former of these cruelties within these terrible walls. No wonder Paul wrote, as we have seen, so anxiously for his winter cloak to protect him from the pestilential damps and cold of such a place! Friends are still allowed to see him, but his mouth is shut in preaching the gospel; and those who do go, seem to venture with fear and trembling, lest, by showing sympathy, they might be involved in the fate which seemed so surely hanging over their reverend father.

But we must pause for a moment to inquire into the cause of this renewed imprisonment.

On the night of the 19th of July, a. d. G4, a ter-

* Sir William Gell.

rible fire broke out in the Circus Maximus of Rome, between the Palatine and Aventine Mount. It raged fiercely for six days and seven nights, spreading with amazing rapidity, — the people being forced to seek for shelter among the monuments and tombs of the dead. No besieging army could have so effected the work of destruction. The citizens saw, with bitter sorrow, their homes and noble buildings becoming a prey to the furious element; and it must have added much to their indignation to find (what it is to be feared was too true) that the monster Nero was the cause of this fearful calamity. “He was offended,” says Suetonius, “with the deformity of the ancient buildings and the narrow passages and turnings of the streets. .... Besides the vast number of ordinary houses, the palaces of the great captains of former ages, adorned with the spoils of foreign conquests — were all consumed to ashes, together with the temples of the gods, which the ancient kings of Rome had raised, and had afterwards been consecrated to the memory of the Roman victories.” It is even said the unfeeling tyrant gazed down with a smile on his face, playing on his musical instrument, from the tower of Maecenas, while his capital was consuming, and the shrieks of his people were borne to his ear!

He soon came to find that so wanton and cruel an outrage had roused, as it might justly have done, the anger of the Romans. What is he to do 1 The base expedient occurs to him to fasten the guilt of the burning on the innocent Christians, whose purity he hated, because it condemned his own unblushing vices. The plot answered too well. The tyrant succeeded, by this malicious lie, in rousing the popular feeling against the followers of Jesus; saving himself by involving the innocent. Cruelties beyond description followed. The suffering Christians were besmeared with pitch, and then set fire to at night to lighten the darkness. Others were sewed up in the skins of beasts, hunted down by dogs, and torn to pieces. Nero exulted also in this spectacle. He moved about, as Tacitus tells us, in a circus erected in his own gardens, “in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes on foot and sometimes viewing the spectacle from his car.”

We may imagine what the feelings of the mob were likely to be, towards the great “ringleader” of the hated sect of Nazarenes. Indeed, this was probably the main charge laid against Paul now, that before he last left Rome he had put this foul deed of burning the city into the minds of his converts. How the Apostle would mourn over the loss of Burrus and Seneca! The Prefect of the Pretorium was now a very different man. Tigellinus, the sharer of Nero’s crimes and cruelties, we may feel assured would speak no kindly word for the prisoner.

The storm is fast gathering over his devoted head, It is likely that no time would elapse before his new trial. In the former one, we have supposed that he was summoned before the emperor. This, however, as we saw, was often the cause of considerable delay. At present he was brought probably before the “Prefect of the city,” — an officer appointed by his imperial master with supreme authority over criminal cases. How touching the position of the Apostle when standing in this court! “At my first answer,” says he to Timothy,” no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.

Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me!”*

He could get no advocate to plead his cause, and challenge his accusers. The terrible flames in the gardens of the emperor had struck terror into many otherwise brave hearts. There was One, and only One, with him; but that one was better than all! It was “the Captain of the Lord’s host:”” who could be against Him V

It has been supposed that the place of his trial was one of those spacious halls or basilicas (a king’s bench) in the Forum. They were of vast size, and admitted great multitudes to see and hear. A row of columns ran down each side of the interior, and they were so well adapted for a large congregation, that when Pagan Rome became Christian, and churches were needed, these basilicas were used for this purpose, and became patterns for others throughout Christendom. The presiding magistrate sat on his tribune (an elevated chair of ivory at one end of the hall), surrounded with assessors or jurors to give him advice in questions of law. Before him stood the prisoner, and the other parts of the building would be crowded with eager listeners, both below and in the galleries. The aged Apostle, with sixty-eight years on his head,t is now brought up from the temporary cell under the basilica. When he appears, a hum goes through the crowded court. Every breath is stilled, and none can tell in the dense mass who are friends and who are foes. The jurors one by one lay their hand on the adjoining altar before the tribune, and in an audible voice swear that they will pronounce a righteous decision.

Paul pled his own cause, and that of his injured

* 2 Tim. iv. 1G, 17. t Chrysostom.

Lord, before these malicious foes. He preached to them (it was his last time) of Jesus! He defended himself against the charge of being accessory to the burning of the city, and thus escaped the lingering agonies that might otherwise have been his.

He was sent back to prison to await a second stage of his trial. We know well how he spent this time, and what his feelings were. He knew what was in prospect, but he was unmoved. He himself tells us how his soul was nerved for the coming day of martyrdom. “The shades of evening are beginning to slope; the gleam of a brighter sky is seen beyond; and with the assured conviction that the object of his life was fully accomplished,” * he can say, “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.” t

Such were the triumphant feelings of the criminal shivering in his dark dungeon! An inner light, however, was there, which turned the shadow of death into the morning. Can we pause, just for a moment, to hear what the historian has to say of the mind of Nero 1 How affecting the contrast!” Not all the congratulations of the soldiers, the senate, and the people, could release him from the horrors of a guilty conscience, which, from that time forward (since the burning of the city), never would permit him to rest, either awake or sleeping. Full often he confessed that the furies lashed him with their whips, and somc-

* Stanley’s Sermons and Essays. f 2 Tim. iv. C-S.

times seared his skin with their burning torches.” His last hours are full of awful lessons. The senate, wearied of his crimes, at length rose up against him. They resolved to scourge him to death and hurl him over the Tarpeian rock. When the resolution came to his ears, he rushed for his golden box of poisons to put an end to himself, but his servants had hidden it. In an agony of rage and terror, he found himself friendless. Barefoot, and covering his face with a napkin, he flung himself at midnight on his horse, and galloped in the dark from his capital with only four attendants, a storm of thunder and lightning increasing his panic. On passing the Pretorian camp we know so well, he heard a noise among his soldiers cursing him. He took refuge in a vault, four miles from the city, and, on hearing the hoofs of his pursuers’ horses, he plunged a dagger, with the help of an attendant, into his throat, and expired; ridding the world of the foulest of her tyrants, at the early age of thirty-two! *

But to return from so sad a contemplation. Few, very few, of Paul’s friends were still left to cheer him. The beloved Luke, we have already mentioned, was faithful to the last. Onesiphorus, too, had come all the way from Asia — forgetful of danger — to see his venerated father, and cheer the gloom of the Mamertine prison. “He sought him out diligently, and found him.” It was a dangerous mission of Christian friendship; for, if his creed had been known, he would have shared the Apostle’s coming fate. We learn, also, from the greetings in the Second Epistle to Timothy, that Linus, Pudens, the son of a senator, and his wife Claudia, whom we have already mentioned, had come to visit him in his dungeon. One, however,

* See Suetonius’ Life of Nero, pp. 374-395. more than all, ho longed to see, to give him his parting blessing, and receive, in return, his presence and support at the hour of death. This was Timothy, his own dear son in the faith. They seem to have taken a parting farewell before this, under an impression that they would never meet again. The faithful “son” of mich an affectionate father had wept bitterly at the thought of seeing his face no more. “I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I have remembrance of thee in my prayers night and day; greatly desiring to see thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy.”’“‘But God had still spared him. They may yet meet again. The spirit of the old man, like another Jacob, revives at the thought! He was far distant in Asia, but Paul earnestly urges that he would come to him with all speed; and, fearing lest even he might be deterred, from the many dangers around, from giving his dying sympathy, he exhorts him, in this most touching and beautiful letter, the” Second Epistle to Timothy,” to boldness in the cause of Jesus. The words at the close —” Grace be with thee. Amen’1’’ — were probably the last words the Great Apostle’s trembling hand penned!

Whether Timothy was able to comply with this earnest wish, we cannot pronounce. We have reason to suppose, however, that he did succeed in reaching his aged father in his cell, and was with him in his closing hours.

For the rest, we have only tradition and common history to trust to. We left the prisoner standing before the tribune in the crowded basilica; the jurors were speaking together, advising what was to be the

* 2 Tim. i. 3, 4.

sentence. Each writes his own verdict on a separate tablet, either A (absolvo, not guilty), or the letter C (condemno, or guilty). The Apostle can easily foresee the result; the tablets are given into the hands of the presiding judge, and the significant word, “Condemno,” rings through the pillared hall, and the breathless audience! He would be led back to his cell. His Roman citizenship ought to have saved him from the cruel custom of scourging the condemned before death, but this seems doubtful on the present occasion. “Baronius tells us, that in the church of St Mary, beyond the bridge in Rome, the pillars are yet extant to which Paul is said to have been bound and scourged.”* What time elapsed between the condemnation and the last fatal blow, we can also only conjecture. It was the usual custom for ten days to intervene, in order that the emperor, if he chose, might alter or reverse the sentence. But it is equally well known that Nero often hurried his victims from the bar to the place of execution, within an hour after judgment was given. It is probable, therefore, that but a short breathing-time would be permitted the Great Apostle, before he finally passed to a more righteous judgment-seat, from the trials and persecutions of a world he had so long and so meekly borne. Tradition has fixed the 29th of June, a. d. 66, as the memorable day when the Church in heaven was to receive the greatest of her “cloud of witnesses.” Paul’s citizenship now, however, saved him once more from the cruel and lingering death of crucifixion he at one time expected. He was led outside the city walls, tied to a stake, and then beheaded. It was at Aquae Salvise, on the road to Ostia, the port of Rome, that the blood of the Apostle was

* C.ivr. p. 10G. shed. If there be a hallowed spot on earth, it is surely here!

Let us imagine the scene! Crowds to and from Ostia were hurrying along, little knowing all that was connected with that band of soldiers, who, under a burning sun, were hurrying their unresisting prisoner to the place of execution. Of those who attended him and witnessed his last moments, we have no information. Many converts, doubtless, who had heard him years before in “his own hired house,” and who had welcomed the shipwrecked prisoner at Appii Forum, were now following the steps of their spiritual father with weeping eyes, feeling that their next meeting would be with tearless ones in heaven. We may only think of the possibility of Luke and Timothy lingering in the crowd, and giving that sympathy by looks and silent expression, which they dared not do by words. We need not, however, dwell on the closing spectacle. Soon all is over! He has willingly, like his Lord, borne his cross “without the gate.” One stroke of the fatal weapon, and the soul of the glorious Hero is carried up by angels to Paradise!

The Church on earth never had such cause to weep since her Lord himself had left. But tears are unavailing. They take up the dead body, and either bury it on the spot, or, as tradition says, place it in the catacombs of the Roman city.

There was something befitting and appropriate in the Great Apostle of the Gentiles thus dying in the Gentile capital; nor can we regret the uncertainty that exists in marking the place of his burial. His true mausoleum is in the souls of the millions on millions who have read, and prayed, and rejoiced over his words In one of the noblest of human temples — one, too, which bears the name of the Apostle-martyr (our own St Paul’s in London) — few have failed to note the inscription on the monument to its illustrious architect, placed immediately under the dome. The spot where the dust of Paul reposes is under no temple made with hands, but under the blue vault of an Italian sky, in the centre of the civilised world; — that world which, in one sense, he has made “consecrated ground;’ for its remotest shores have listened, or are listening, to the echoes of his undying voice, and receiving his apostolic benediction. The Church may well inscribe on his Roman tomb, as she looks to the nations he lias thus Christianised — the wide realms which, under God, he has made happier —

“SI MONUMENTUM REQUIRIS, CTRCUMSPICE!”

His own humility was content with a lowlier motto —

“To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain 1”

The pains of death are past;

Labour and sorrow cease;
And, life’s long warfare closed at last,

His soul is found in peace!

‘Soldier of Christ, well done!
Praise be thy new employ;
And while eternal ages run,
Rest in thy Saviour’s joy.”