Part. 4
Today let us go for a walk on the Palatine, one of the seven hills on which the city of Rome is built. It is called the Palatine Mount because on it once stood the palaces of the emperors. Now it is a park where the gigantic ruins of palaces rise amid grass and trees and flower beds. Many of them used to be under the ground, but they have cleared away the earth now, and you may even walk up the old, old street, with ruins of shops on one side, and on the other great arches and mysterious flights of stairs which once led to palaces on the hill above. And on the hill itself we can wander through great tunnels and underground galleries which will suddenly lead us to the old gardens with flower beds and fountains. In other places are gigantic rows of arches built sometimes of great blocks of stone, sometimes of brick. These are only the cellars of some of the palaces. As we wander through the ruins of marble halls, we can scarcely imagine the grandeur and beauty with which these old emperors surrounded themselves.
“And what has all this grandeur to do with Paul?” you say.
Wait a bit. We are reading what the guidebook says about each place as we come to it, and now we find ourselves in a great court, paved with marble and known as Caesar’s Judgment Hall. Round the sides are the stumps or broken remains of marble pillars. The court has a rounded end, like’ a great bow window, in which once stood a marble throne; and separating the throne from the rest of the court was an ornamented marble fence, or screen, the remains of which may still be seen.
Here the emperor himself sat as judge and heard the prisoners who had appealed to him.
Paul, you remember, had appealed to Caesar, therefore it is probable that at the end of two years, in Rome, he stood here before Caesar’s throne, pleaded his cause and was set free. Of this, however, we have no record. But the epistle to Titus and the first epistle to Timothy were certainly written when he was at liberty, and after the two years’ imprisonment at Rome. We do not know how long he was at liberty, but it was probably not more than two years. In the second epistle to Timothy he was again a prisoner in Rome and had been brought before the emperor.
Nero, the worst of the emperors, was reigning at that time. The trial would be held either in this hall, or in one very much like it in the Forum close by. Let us stand here, then, and think how, long ago, in that throne sat Nero, with his cruel, wicked face, and his purple robe; guards and courtiers are standing all about the grand, spacious hall! In the midst stands an old lonely man, being tried for his life. No one dares to speak a word for him.
“At my first answer, no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.
“Notwithstanding, the Lord stood with me and strengthened me; that by me the preaching might be fully known, and that all the Gentiles might hear: and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.”
Thirty years before, the Lord Jesus Himself had stood before a judge, had witnessed before Pontius Pilate a good confession. Now He stood beside His servant and strengthened him, so that he could preach the gospel to the crowds who came to hear his defense for his life.
Nineteen hundred years have passed away, but the Lord still deigns to stand by His servants and strengthen them. You are not asked to join a church or subscribe to a creed, but to trust yourself to a real person, the Lord Jesus Christ.
ML 05/27/1917