“It was in Antioch of Pisidia that I was first privileged to make the great teacher’s acquaintance. I had gone thither on business and found the city in a great state of commotion. My host could talk of nothing else but the discourse a stranger had delivered in the Synagogue on the preceding Sabbath. My host was a devout man, one whose thoughts were greatly filled with hopes of the redemption of Israel, and what he had heard had appealed to all that was best in him as nothing had ever appealed before. The stranger had, he told me, a companion, a man of most majestic presence and of a singularly benevolent expression. He had read the Scripture for the day, and had added a few words, very solemn and impressive, and delivered with an affecting earnestness of manner. But the other man was the great speaker. He was scarcely an orator; his style was curiously involved; his delivery harsh and ungraceful; his personal presence feeble and unimpressive. Yet his speech had irresistible power ‘with the storm of his [145] fast coming words like the drift of the winter tide snows.’ There was a great gathering to hear him. The synagogue was filled from end to end; and outside there was an immense audience of Gentiles. All the city seemed to have come together. I never saw such enthusiasm. Every face seemed to glow with joy and hope. One might have thought that every man and woman in the crowd had heard the news of some personal good fortune. But you know that there are hearts which nothing can touch, and I am afraid that nowhere will you find them so seared and hardened as among our own countrymen. Well, there were some in the audience that day who heard this noble teaching with the blackest rage in their hearts. That day, and for some time afterwards, they could do nothing. But they bided their time. They went about with slanders and calumnies; one kind of ware for the Jews and one for the Gentiles. So they worked and worked away, till they turned the whole city, one might say, against the preacher of the ‘Way.’ Well; we have no right to be surprised. It is just what happened to the Master himself. One day all Jerusalem was shouting out ‘Hosannah to the Son of David,’ and two or three days after it was screaming, ‘Crucify Him! Crucify Him!’ [146] The end of it was that the two had to fly for their lives from Antioch. At my suggestion they came to Iconium. I thought that I might do something for them there, for it was my own city. Well, their enemies did not leave them alone. They followed them and laid charges of disloyalty to Caesar, and I know not what else before the Iconium magistrates. Then I put in a word; and did so, I hope, to some purpose. I had business relations with some of them, and they had reasons for wishing to oblige me. They could not very well dismiss the charge at once; but they did what they could. They committed the accused to the charge of one of themselves. (Footnote: This was a practice known to the Roman law under the name of Libera Custodia. So in our own history some of the bishops deprived after the accession of Queen Elizabeth were committed to the charge of the Archbishop of Canterbury and other prelates.) He was to have them in his keeping till they should be called upon to make a regular answer to what was brought against them. Now comes in the curious part of my story.
“Just opposite the magistrate’s house was the dwelling of one of the richest men in the city. The street was very narrow, you will understand, with just room for foot passengers to pass backwards and forwards. This man had a daughter, Thekla by name, a very beautiful girl who was [147] about to be married to one of the most promising young men in Iconium. One nightit was very shortly after the prisoners had been committedthere was a little gathering in the chamber where they were lodged. The magistrate was there with his two grown-up sons; I was there also and I had brought some friends with me. Altogether there might have been some fifteen persons. Paul spoke to us about giving up everything for Christmoney, family, home, all that was nearest and dearest to us. He was like to a man inspired, and his voice rose as if he were speaking not to less than a score of hearers, but to thousands. Thekla sat at the window of her chamber on the second floor, and she heard every word; and what she heard went straight to her heart. It seemed to her like a message from God. A couple of hours or so later she went across to the magistrate’s house and bribed the man who was in charge of the prisoners with a silver bracelet to let her into their room. What Paul said to her I know not. That he told her to do what she did I do not believe for a moment, but it is easy enough to understand how she may have come to think that he did. Well, the next day she sent for her betrothed. First she tried persuasion. Would he release her from the engagement? She would not marry him; [148] she was called to other things; she must serve God. All this was like an unknown tongue to the young man. ‘Is she mad?’ he said to himself. It might be so, but she seemed quite rational in her way of talking, and to be quite sure of her own mind. He did his best to persuade her, but he might as well have talked to a rock. Then naturally he went to her father. The father, an old man, passionately fond of his daughter, did all that he could to bring her to another way of thinking. When she was obstinately set on her own way, he grew angry. He would shut her up till she came to a better way of thinking. And so he did. But he was not thorough enough in his proceedings. He left her her jewellery, and with that the way of getting out of her prison. All the household idolized her. Very likely she could have got away without a bribe; but with a bribe she was irresistible. One morning, three or four days after the beginning of this affair, she was gone. She had heard, it seems, that Paul and his companion, who by this time had been released by the magistrates on condition that they would leave Iconium without delay, had gone on to Lystra. She followed them alone. Imagine that! a girl who had never been outside her home without two or three attendants! I [149] doubt, in fact, whether she had ever set foot on the ground outside her father’s house and garden. Somehow she missed them. Possibly they had taken another route; possibly she had been misinformed. Anyhow she never came up with them. When she was about a mile from Lystra, the Eparch of the city overtook her. He was a priest of the local Temple of the Julian Housethey have a cult there of Julius the Dictator and Augustusand he was coming home from a function at which he had been assisting. He was wearing his priestly robethat you will see turned out to be an important point. It was an amazing thing, as you may suppose, for a beautiful young woman, richly dressed, to be seen walking alone on the public road. He got down from his chariot, and asked her to ride with him. She refused. He put his hand on her shoulder. She turned round, and in trying to wrest herself away, she caught her hand in his robe and made a great rent in it. He was of course in a furious rage, and bade his lictors arrest her. The men handcuffed her, put her into a car which was following the Eparch’s chariot and so brought her to Lystra.
“I don’t know exactly the particulars of what followed. Thekla was brought before the Eparch and the other magistrates of the town. He [150] was, of course, furious, and then she had certainly insulted a priest and torn the sacred robe. Still she had had provocation, and the tearing was plainly an accident. There must have been something more. She may have used strong words about the local gods. Even the Greeks, as you know, look down upon this particular kind of worship. It seems anyhow that there was some further offence beyond the blow and the tearing of the robe, for the sentence was a very heavy one, the heaviest that could be inflicted. Thekla was found guilty of blasphemy, and was sentenced to suffer death by being exposed to wild beasts. There was to be a show in two or three days’ time.