Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/216

 *rious course, and his enemies' cruel policy, by the same bloody doom; meanwhile held in the safe keeping of an ever-watchful Roman guard, forbidding even the wildest hope of escape. Yet why should they wholly despair? On that passover, ten years before, how far more gloomy and hopeless the glance they threw on the cross of their Lord! Yet from that doubly hopeless darkness, what glorious light sprang up to them? And was the hand that then broke through the bands of death and the gates of Hades, now so shortened that it could not sever the vile chains of paltry tyranny which confined this faithful apostle, nor open wide the guarded gates of his castle prison? Surely there was still hope for faith which had been taught such lessons of undoubting trust in God. Nor were they thoughtless of the firm support and high consolations which their experience afforded. In prayer intense and unceasing, they poured out their souls in sympathetic grief and supplication, for the relief of their great elder brother from his deadly peril; and in sorrowful entreaty the whole church continued day and night, for the safety of Peter.

Castle Antonia.—For Josephus's account of the position and erection of this work, see my note on page 95, (sec. 8.) There has been much speculation about the place of the prison to which Peter was committed. The sacred text (Acts xii. 10,) makes it plain that it was without the city itself, since after leaving the prison it was still necessary to enter the city by "the iron gate." Walch, Kuinoel and Bloomfield adopt the view that it was in one of the towers or castles that fortified the walls. Wolf and others object to the view that it was without the walls; because, as Wolf says, it was not customary to have public prisons outside of the cities, since the prisoners might in that case be sometimes rescued by a bold assault from some hardy band of comrades, &c. But this objection is worth nothing against castle Antonia, which, though it stood entirely separated from the rest of the city, was vastly strong, and by its position as well as fortification, impregnable to any common force;—a circumstance which would at once suggest and recommend it as a secure place for one who, like Peter, had escaped once from the common prison. There was always a Roman garrison in Antonia. (Jos. War, V. v. 8.)

In the steady contemplation of the nearness of his bloody doom, the great apostle remained throughout the passover, shut off from all the consolations of fraternal sympathy, and awaiting the end of the few hours which were still allotted by the religious scruples of his mighty sovran. In his high and towering prison in Castle Antonia, parted only by a deep, broad rift in the precipitous rocks, from the great terraces of the temple itself, from whose thronged courts now rung the thanksgiving songs of a rejoicing nation, he heard them, sending up in thousands of voices the praise of their fathers' God, who still remembered Israel in mercy, renewing their ancient glories under the bright and peaceful dominion of their new-crowned king. And with the anthems of