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 Paul an opportunity to make his defence in the matter of which he was accused.  Ananias the high-priest presided, and the Roman tribune was present at the proceedings, which were tumultuous and angry.  Paul seeing that the assembly was made up of Pharisees, Sadducees, and hostile parties, made no elaborate defence, and the tribune dissolved the assembly; but forty of the most hostile and fanatical formed a conspiracy, and took a solemn oath not to eat or drink until they had assassinated him.  The plot reached the ears of a nephew of Paul, who revealed it to the tribune.  The officer listened attentively to all the details, and at once took his resolution to send Paul to Caesarea, both to get him out of the hands of the Jews, and to have him judged by the procurator Felix.  Accordingly, accompanied by an escort of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen of the guard, Paul was sent by night, secretly, to the Roman capital of the Province.  He entered the city in the course of the next day, and was at once led to the presence of the governor.

Felix, as procurator, ruled over Judaea with the power of a king.  He had been a freedman of the Emperor Claudius, and was allied by marriage to Claudius himself,—­an ambitious, extortionate, and infamous governor.  Felix was obliged to give Paul a fair trial, and after five days the indomitable missionary was confronted with accusers, among whom appeared the high-priest Ananias.  They associated with them a lawyer called Tertullus, of oratorical gifts, who conducted the case.  The principal charges made against Paul were that he was a public pest and leader of seditions; that he was a ringleader of the Nazarenes (the contemptuous name which the Jews gave to the Christians); and that he had attempted to profane the Temple, which was a capital offence according to the Jewish law.  Paul easily refuted these charges, and had Felix been an upright judge he would have dismissed the case; but supposing the apostle to be rich because of the