If we consider the context, and the part which had been formerly acted by the apostle, it will not be difficult to ascertain his meaning, nor strange that he should express himself as in the text. He begins the chapter with strong expressions of concern for his nation, who had rejected him "whose name alone is given under heaven," for the salvation of men. If they continued to neglect the grace offered them in the gospel, he knew that they could not escape. And when he looked on them and mourned over them, the dangers which a few years before had hung over himself, rose up before him. He had been an unbeliever, a blasphemer, and a persecutor of the church of Christ; had boasted his enmity to Christ and opposition to the gospel; in which he had even exceeded the body of his nation--he had taken the lead against Christianity--been unrivalled in zeal against the cause, and rancour against the followers of the Lamb. When warned of his danger, and admonished to consider what would be his portion, should Jesus prove to be the Messias, he seems to have derided the friendly warnings, and imprecated on himself the vengeance of the Nazerene!--to have defied him to do his worst! to pour his curse upon him! It is not strange that witnessing the temper of his nation, should call these things to his remembrance--that the consideration should affect him--that he should shudder at the prospect of the destruction which hung over them, and at the recollection of that from which himself had been "scarcely saved"--that he should exclaim, "God and my conscience witness my great heaviness and continual sorrow, when I look on my brethren the Jews, and consider the ruin coming upon them, from which I have been saved, _so as by fire_! Lately I was even more the enemy of Christ than they, and boasted greater enmity.. against him! And should have brought on myself a more intolerable doom, had not a miracle of power and mercy arrested me in my course!" That such considerations and a recollection of the share which he had formerly taken in strengthening the prejudices of his nation against the truth, should deeply affect him, and draw such expression from him as we find in the text and context, is not strange. They appear natural for a person circumstanced as he was at that time; and especially to one divinely forewarned of the devastation then coming on his place and nation. These we conceive to be the feelings and views expressed by the apostle in the beginning of this chapter--but that he should wish to be put into the place of Christ; or madly with evil to himself, from which nobody could be benefited, cannot be suspected; unless with Festus, we suppose him to have been "beside himself," and not to have known what he wrote, when he expressed himself as in the text. REFLECTIONS