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._" Give us life, for we gave you death. Give us
help for we gave you ruin. Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly
vision. The Christian Alexander, he crosses to Macedon with the words of
peace instead of war,--the Christian shepherd of the people, he carries
to Greece, from Troy, the tidings of salvation instead of carnage, of
charity instead of license. And he knows that to Europe it is the
beginning of her new civilization, it in the dawn of her new warfare, of
her new poetry, of her reign of heroes who are immortal.

That _faith_ of his, now years old, has this day received its crowning
victory. This day, when he has faced Nero and Seneca together, may well
stand in his mind as undoing centuries of bloodshed and of license.

And in this effort, and in that spiritual strength which had nerved him
in planning it and carrying it through, was the "Asian mystery." Ask
what was the secret of Paul's power as he bearded the baby Emperor, and
abashed the baby Philosopher? What did he give the praise to, as he