ough
not one of the timid converts were there, but the soldier chained at
his side,--still he triumphed over Nero and Nero's minister.

From that audience-hall those three men retire. The boy, grown old in
lust, goes thence to be an hour alone, to ponder for an hour on this
God, this resurrection, and this truth, of which the Jew, in such
uncourtly phrase, has harangued him. To be alone, until the spectre of a
dying mother rises again to haunt him, to persecute him and drive him
forth to his followers and feasters, where he will try to forget Paul
and the Saviour and God, where he would be glad to banish them forever.
He does not banish them forever! Henceforward, whenever that spectre of
a mother comes before him, it must re-echo the words of God and eternity
which Paul has spoken. Whenever the chained and bleeding captive of the
arena bends suppliant before him, there must return the memory of the
only captive who was never suppliant before him, and his words of sturdy
power!

And Seneca? Seneca goes home with the mortified feelings of a great man
who has detected his own meanness.

We all know the feeling; for all God's children might be great, and it
is with miserable mortification that we detect ourselves in one or
another pettiness. Seneca goes home to say: "This wild _Easterner_ has
rebuked the Emperor as I have so often wanted to rebuke him. He stood
there, as I have wanted to stand, a man before a brute.

"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