sent
to bring the prisoners to the judgment hall returned, saying: "The
prison truly found we shut with all safety, and the keepers standing
without before the doors; but when we had opened, we found no man
within." As the judges sat in impotent consternation, an informer
appeared with the word that the men they wanted were at that moment
preaching in the courts. The captain and his guard arrested the apostles
a third time, and brought them in, but without violence, for they feared
the people. The high priest accused the prisoners by question and
affirmation: "Did not we straitly command you that ye should not teach
in this name? and, behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine,
and intend to bring this man's blood upon us." Yet, how recently had
those same rulers led the rabble in the awful imprecation, "His blood be
on us, and on our children."[1418]

Peter and the other apostles, undaunted by the august presence, and
undeterred by threatening words or actions, answered with the direct
counter-charge that they who sat there to judge were the slayers of the
Son of God. Ponder well the solemn affirmation: "We ought to obey God
rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew
and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a
Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness
of sins. And we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the
Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them that obey him."

Closing, locking, bolting their hearts against the testimony of the
Lord's own, the chief priests, scribes, and elders of the people
counseled together as to how they could put these men to death. There
was at least one honorable exception among the murderously inclined
councilors. Gamaliel, who was a Pharisee and a noted doctor of the law,
the teacher of Saul of Tarsus afterward known through conversion, works,
and divine commission, as Paul the apostle,[1419] rose in the council,
and having directed that the apostles be removed from the hall, warned
his colleagues against the injustice they had in mind. He cited the
cases of men falsely claiming to have been sent of God, everyone of whom
had come to grief with utter and most ignominious failure of his
seditious plans; so would these men come to nought if the work they
professed proved to be of men; "But," added the dispassionate and
learned doctor, "if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye