The Court-House and the Trial

NoTwitusTanvine the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. A.V.

But the Lord stood by me, and gave me power, so that through me the proclamation might be made in full, and that all the Gentiles might hear it; and I was rescued out of the lion’s mouth,

Tuts verse, duly considered, paints for us one of the 2 Tim. iv. great pictures of the Bible. The picture happens to 17.

be preserved, if we may put it so, in a remote corner a pride of the wonderful Scripture gallery. This closing paragraph of St. Paul’s dying Letter is not one of

those prominent passages which are more or less familiar to every Christian. To many a true believer

and careful reader it is a nook not often visited;

when visited, it is perhaps too quickly traversed to

allow its treasure to be fully seen. But the treasure

is great and rare Let us to-day pause in the place awhile, and look deliberately around. ‘This scene

is a noble one indeed.

We have pondered already, in our last reading, The Present that glorious central light which gives life to the Lord. whole picture, ‘But the Lord stood by me.’ Yes, whatever else the event presents to the spiritual eye, it shows us this — Jxsus present with His saint, mysteriously, specially, ‘giving him power.’ The aged one, worn low by labour, suffering, and many

2 Tim. iv. sorrows, is not really left alone there to his own
The Place
and
Audience.

feebleness. Two are standing there, not one, ‘and the form of the Second is like the Son of God.’ He stands, embracing the man whom He has loved and saved, pouring by His touch an immortal force into that weary head and heart, and that fragile frame. But while the spiritual eye can see this, guided by the words of the Epistle, the natural eye is helpless to follow it. What do our mere senses see? On the

one hand a vast concourse, spectators and auditors,

all full of the curiosity which a remarkable trial has always excited, above all a trial which has life or death for its issues, and more than ever when the accusation connects itself with the ‘sensation’ of an alleged public danger. Men and women, they crowd the court-house, a mighty multitude of ‘ Gentiles,’ that is to say, of the pagan population of the Capital. The building where we find them can without difficulty be imagined in outline, for it is one of those basilicas whose interior arrangements became the model for the first churches of the Christian Empire; many of them were actually converted, just as they stood, into such churches. Place before your eyes the Madeleine at Paris, for example, with its stately oblong, and you see a fair suggestion of the shape and design of the building where St. Paul answered for his life. It had its nave, and also its aisles, parted by pillars from the nave. Along the aisles ran galleries, to give room for the throngs which sought admission on such a day as this. At the far end was an apse. Within it stood a raised platform, the ‘tribunal,’ supporting the chairs of the judge and

The Court-House and the Trial

his assessors. Behind this were seats, ranged along 2 Tim. iv. the wall of the apse. In front of it, guarded by 17- lictors, stood the accused, and the accuser or accusers were placed near him.

On that tribunal who sits to-day, to hear this Nero. momentous case argued? Quite possibly the Emperor himself. See, he has entered from the Palace with his body- guard, and has taken his place; it is none other than Nero. The face was once handsome, perhaps once noble, but that awful change has passed over it which seems almost fatally, almost mechanically, to come into a nature, not quite true and virtuous, called to the tremendous temptations of really absolute power; practically irresponsible, intoxicated by the possibilities opened before a flattered and unlimited self-will. The stain of an advanced sensuality lies upon the features, which yet look as if once capable of higher thoughts and a fine ideal. The frown, almost the scowl, of a growing cruelty, born of a universal subservience, sits upon the forehead as the judge surveys the audience and looks down upon the Accused.

The Accused — we have seen him already. He The stands there, to all seeming, totally alone; broken “°¥S*4 down in physical respects, without a single friend, and loaded with charges of private and public wickedness which make ‘the Gentiles’ wonder at him as a monster. And now those charges are being stated in the pleadings of the accusing ‘orator.’ These completed, as no ‘orator’ takes the part of the prisoner to-day, he will have to reply for himself, if reply he can.

2 Tim. iv.
aia
What was

the Accusation.