on the stairs of the fortress, and address the multitude.  When they saw him preparing to make some statement, the noise subsided; and, “when they heard that he spake to them in the Hebrew tongue,” that is, in the Aramaic, the current language of the country, “they kept the more silence.” [135:2] Paul accordingly proceeded to give an account of his early life, of the remarkable circumstances of his conversion, and of his subsequent career; but, when he mentioned his mission to the Gentiles, it was at once apparent that the topic was most unpopular, for his auditors lost all patience.  “They gave him audience unto this word, and then lifted up their voices and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live.  And as they cried out, and cast off their clothes, and threw dust into the air, the chief captain commanded him to be brought into the castle.” [135:3]

The confinement of Paul, which now commenced at the feast of Pentecost in A.D. 58, continued about five years.  It may be enough to notice the mere outline of his history during this tedious bondage.  In the first place, for the purpose of ascertaining the exact nature of the charge against him, he was confronted with the Sanhedrim; but when he informed them that “of the hope and resurrection of the dead” he was called in question, [136:1] there “arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees” [136:2] constituting the council; and the chief captain, fearing lest his prisoner “should have been pulled in pieces of them, commanded the soldiers to go down, and to take him by force from among them, and to bring him into the castle.” [136:3] Certain of the Jews, about forty in number, now entered into a conspiracy binding themselves “under a curse, saying, that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul;” [136:4] and it was arranged that the bloody vow should be executed when, under pretence of a new examination, he should be brought again before the Sanhedrim; but their proceedings meanwhile became known to the apostle’s nephew; the chief captain received timely information; and the scheme thus miscarried. [136:5] Paul, protected by a strong military escort, was now sent away by night to Caesarea; and, when there, was repeatedly examined before Felix, the Roman magistrate who at this time, under the title of Procurator, had the government of Judea.  The historian Tacitus says of this imperial functionary that “in the practice of all kinds of cruelty and lust, he exercised the power of a king with the mind of a slave;” [136:6] and it is a remarkable proof, as well of the intrepid faithfulness, as of the eloquence of the apostle, that he succeeded in arresting the attention, and in alarming the fears of this worthless profligate.  Drusilla, his wife, a woman who had deserted her former husband, [136:7] was a Jewess; and, as she appears to have been desirous to see and hear the great Christian preacher who had been labouring with so much zeal to