"He said what I have thought, and have been afraid to say. Downright,
straightforward, he told the Emperor truths as to Rome, as to man, and
as to his vices, which I have longed to tell him. He has done what I am
afraid to do. He has dared this, which I have dallied with, and left
undone. _What is the mystery of his power?_"

Seneca did not know. Nero did not know. The "Eastern mystery" was in
presence before them, and they knew it not!

What was the mystery of Paul's power?

Paul leaves them with the triumph of a man who has accomplished the hope
of long years. Those solemn words of his, "After that, I _must_ also see
Rome," expressed the longing of years, whose object now, in part, at
least, is gratified. He must see Rome!

It is God's mission to him that he see Rome and its Emperor. Paul has
seen with the spirit's eye what we have seen since in history,--that he
is to be the living link by which the electric fire of life should pass
first from religious Asia to quicken this dead, brutish Europe. He knows
that he is God's messenger to bear this mystery of life eternal from the
one land to the other, and to unfold it there. And to-day has made real,
in fact, this his inward confidence. To-day has put the seal of fact on
that vision of his, years since, when he first left his Asiatic home. A
prisoner in chains, still he has to-day seen the accomplishment of the
vows, hopes, and resolutions of that field of Troy, most truly famous
from the night he spent there. There was another of these hours when God
brings into one spot the acts which shall be the _argument_ of centuries
of history. Paul had come down there in his long Asiatic
journeys,--Eastern in his lineage, Eastern in his temperament, Eastern
in his outward life, and Eastern in his faith,--to that narrow
Hellespont, which for long ages has separated East from West, tore madly
up the chains which would unite them, overwhelmed even love when it
sought to intermarry them, and left their cliffs frowning eternal hate
from shore to shore. Paul stood upon the Asian shore and looked across
upon the Western. There were Macedonia and the hills of Greece, here
Troas and the ruins of Ilium. The names speak war. The blue Hellespont
has no voice but separation, except to Paul. But to Paul, sleeping, it
might be, on the tomb of Achilles, that night the "man of Macedonia"
appears, and bids him come over to avenge Asia, to pay back the debt of
Troy.

"Come over _and help us_.