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A glance at the first few pages of Crimes of Christianity will also show that the earliest apostles of Christianity were thoroughly imbued with the spirit of persecution. Paul smote Elymas with blindness for opposing him, and even "the beloved disciple" said "If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed."
He sought, probably from curiosity, to hear Barnabas and Saul preach; but the missionaries were bitterly opposed by a Jewish sorcerer called Elymas, who was stricken with blindness by Saul, the miracle producing such an effect on the governor that he became a convert to the new faith. There is no evidence that he was baptized, but he was respected and beloved as a good man.
Paul present at the Martyrdom of S. Stephen; 2. Conversion of St. Paul; 3. The Apostle consecrating Presbyters; 4. Elymas smitten with Blindness. In the lower part of the window, 5. Sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas at Lystra; 6. St. Paul before the Elders at Jerusalem; 7. His Trial before Agrippa; 8. His Martyrdom. The five eastern windows in the Lady Chapel were designed by Mr.
Try and sing in the night, Christian, for that is one of the best arguments in all the world in favor of your religion. Our divines nowadays spend a great deal of time in trying to prove Christianity against those who disbelieve it. I should like to have seen Paul trying that! Elymas the sorcerer withstood him: how did our friend Paul treat him?
Poor ignorant sinner! hear the counsel of God to such, and learn thyself to be wiser. "Is any afflicted? let him pray. And wilt thou judge him that doth thus? Art thou almost like Elymas the sorcerer, that sought to turn the deputy from the faith? Thou seekest to pervert the right ways of the Lord.
"The transcendant excellence in composition, and in appropriate character to subject, in the cartoon of Paul preaching at Athens, has left us to desire or expect nothing farther to be done in telling this incident of history. "In the composition of the death of Ananias, and in the single figure of Elymas the sorcerer struck blind, we have the same example of excellence.
Raphael, in muffling up the figure of Elymas the Sorcerer in his garments, appears to have extended the idea of blindness even to his clothes. Was this design? Probably not; but merely the feeling of analogy thoughtlessly suggesting this device, which being so suggested was retained and carried on, because it flattered or fell in with the original feeling.
"Then our opinions are the same, good Father." "Nay, not exactly, my son. Elymas, the sorcerer, was permitted to practise his arts gained from the devil that it might be proved, by his overthrow and blindness, how inferior was his master to the Divine Ruler; but it does not therefore follow that sorcery generally was permitted.
Angels, he continued, were no more than God's messengers, and he related that when he had shed a mist and darkness over the eyes of Elymas, the sooth-sayer in Cyprus, he had received the power to do so direct from God; he affirmed too, and in great earnestness, that it was not an angel but God himself that had prompted him to tell the cripple at Iconium to stand upright on his feet; he had been warned in a vision not to go into Bithynia; and at Troas a man had appeared to him in the night and ordered him to come over to Macedonia, which was his country; he did not know if the man was a real man in the flesh or the spirit of a man who had lived in the flesh: but he was not an angel.
For Elymas it was chastisement, which might lead him to cease to pervert the ways of the Lord, and himself begin to walk in them. Perhaps, after a season, he did see 'the better Sun. Saul's part in the incident is noteworthy. We observe the vivid touch, he 'fastened his eyes on him. There must have been something very piercing in the fixed gaze of these flashing eyes.
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