strong will, and all they could do was to provide him with a sufficient
escort to shield him from ordinary dangers on the way.

The long voyage from Ephesus was prosperous but tedious, and on the last
day before the Pentecostal feast, in May, in the year 58 A.D., Paul for
the fifth time entered Jerusalem. His meeting with the elders, under the
presidency of James,--"the stern, white-robed, ascetic, mysterious
prophet,"--was cold. His personal friends in Jerusalem were few, and his
enemies were numerous, powerful, and bitter; for he had not only
emancipated himself from the Jewish Law, with all its rites and
ceremonies, but had made it of no account in all the churches he had
founded. What had he naturally to expect from the zealots for that Law
but a renewed persecution? Even the Jewish Christians gave no thanks for
the splendid contribution which Paul had gathered in Asia for the relief
of their poor. Nor was there any exultation among them when Paul
narrated his successful labors among the Gentiles. They pretended to
rejoice, but added, "You observe, brother, how many myriads of the Jews
there are that have embraced the faith, and they are all zealots for the
Law. And we are informed that thou teachest all the Jews that are among
the Gentiles to forsake Moses." There was no cordiality among the Jewish
elders of the Christian community, and deadly hostility among the
unconverted Jews, for they had doubtless heard of Paul's
marvellous career.

Jerusalem was then full of strangers, and the Jews of Asia recognizing
Paul in the Temple, raised a disturbance, pretending that he was a
profaner of the sacred edifice. The crowd of fanatics seized him,
dragged him out of the Temple, and set about to kill him. But the Roman
authorities interfered, and rescuing him from the hands of the
infuriated mob, bore him to the castle, the tower of Antonia. When they
arrived at the stairs of the tower, Paul begged the tribune to be
allowed to speak to the angry and demented crowd. The request was
granted, and he made a speech in Hebrew, narrating his early history and
conversion; but when he came to his mission to the Gentiles, the uproar
was renewed, the people shouting, "Away with such a fellow from the
earth, for it is not fit that he should live!" And Paul would have been
bound and scourged, had he not proclaimed that he was a Roman citizen.

On the next day the Roman magistrate summoned the chief priests and the
Sanhedrim, to give P