blood had dried in hard and painful clots, took his prisoners (if rather he was not now their prisoner) and washed their stripes with pure, clean water, and received in return (pulchra vice, fair exchange, beautifully says Bengel) the waters of baptism. He washed them from their blood. They washed him and his household from their sins in the waters of baptism, the laver of regeneration; not only he, but all his, an expression which leaves us free to imagine a family of children and domestic slaves. All this was within the prison walls. But now after such evidence as he had before him of their being highly favoured of God, and having in all probability learnt from Paul himself that they were Roman citizens, and had therefore been illegally beaten and imprisoned, he felt justified in bringing them into his house, setting meat before them, and that without fear; for his heart was lifted up in thankfulness and prayer, and believing in God with all his house, he rejoiced. What a thankful and rejoicing Church was that at Philippi! Again and again do we find Paul in his Epistle to his beloved Philippians referring to this conspicuous feature in their Christian character.

But by the time that the sun had risen, some change had come over those over-zealous magistrates, perhaps on account of the earthquake, or perhaps news had reached them of what had taken place in the prison; and they fell into a state of great alarm, feeling that they had been guilty of a great blunder, and they sent the lictors early to the prison, with the message: "Let those men go." The keeper of the prison conveyed the message to Paul and Silas, with the addition of an entreaty to obey quietly, to avoid any further questioning. But now Paul and Silas exhibit to us a feature of the Christian character not often enough illustrated or insisted upon. The meekness and gentleness of Christ are too often misunderstood as meaning that tame submission to all insults, injuries, and

injustices, the result of which would simply be to disorder the whole relations of human life, to give the lawless, the presumptuous, and the arrogant a secure and assured supremacy over the honest and well-disposed. The rule seems to be that in private matters we should not be too exacting of our rights; but that in all matters of public interest, where the safety and well-being of others are concerned, we should be firm, nay, inflexible, in maintaining the claims of justice and equity. On this principle, Paul, for the first time, asserted his rights as a Roman citizen, and desiring to mark, publicly, his sense of the indignity done to that high character, and to chasten, however lightly, the insolence of these little men in authority, he refused to move unless the duumvirs themselves came to fetch them out. There is in this much of the spirit of what we rightly call the modern gentleman in Paul, who knew when to yield, yet not forgetting to lay hold of proper opportunities to assert his public and civil rights, and with his own, those of his fellow-citizens.

This dignified attitude of an injured man humbled the trembling magistrates, and they gladly made a temporary sacrifice of their fictitious dignity, and came down in a beseeching frame of mind to beg them of their compassion and pity to go quietly away, without making any complaint, and to leave the city as soon as they conveniently could.

The Apostles, therefore, left the prison, and entered the house of Lydia, where they received the sympathetic kindness and attention of the Christian brethren, who, we have reason to believe, were now numerous, and departed westward by the great Egnatian Way, leaving behind them, to carry on and establish the work, Luke and Timotheus.

CHAPTER XV.

THESSALONICA.

ACTS xvii. 1-15.

A.D. 53.—Claudius-Herod Agrippa II.

"If ever you have looked on better days;

If ever been where bells have knolled to church;

If ever sat at any good man's feast ;

If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear,
And know what 'tis to pity and be pitied;
Let gentleness my strong enforcement be."

SHAKESPEARE.

"C'est la voix du cœur qui seule au cœur arrive."

Alfred de Musset.

T. PAUL'S travels in Greece were accomplished with

Sas little of trouble or hardship, except for enemies, as

distant journeys are taken in England at the present time. The great Roman roads, branching out in all directions from Rome to the farthest extremities of the Empire, were to the Roman Empire what railways are to us in the nineteenth century; and a traveller or a body of troops passed, without perils of floods or of bad roads, from Rome to Byzantium, and on to Antioch in Syria, as easily, though not so expeditiously, as a traveller now from London to Aberdeen.

After the great Samnite war, the Consul Appius "built the Appian Way. Then, at different times, the benefactors of the Republic or of the Empire laid down the Valerian, Aurelian, and Flaminian Ways. Eastwards from

Rome to Egnatia, on the east coast of the Peninsula, ran the Appian Way, of which more hereafter; from Egnatia to Brundusium, now Brindisi, a port of such great importance to the great overland route to India, ran the commencement of the grand Egnatian Way. Ships were continually plying over the stormy sea between this port and Dyrrhachium and Apollonia on the coast of Epirus, now Albania, part of the crumbling Turkish Empire. These two ports (now Durazzo and Avlona), with Brundusium, were as familiar to the Romans as Dover, Folkestone, or Holyhead with us. The two roads from Dyrrhachium and Apollonia united at Edessa, whence the Egnatian Way led on to Pella, Thessalonica, Amphipolis, and Philippi to Cypsela and Byzantium.

These Roman roads were splendid specimens of engineering, consisting of several layers of the hardest concrete with masonry, and the surface being laid of square stones of great hardness and durability, firmly cemented together. The distances were marked by milestones through their whole extent. In a good map of England we see in many places for instance, in Kent between Chatham and Canterbury, and on entering Atherstone from the south-stretches of Roman road, remarkable for their straightness and breadth. The foundations of those magnificent Ways remain solid and compact until the present day.

After the battle of Pydna, the victorious Consul, Paulus Æmilius, divided the newly-acquired province of Macedonia into four parts, numerically distinguished, from east to west, as Macedonia Prima, Secunda, Tertia, Quarta, divided respectively by the three rivers Strymon, Axius, and Peneus, of which the four capitals respectively were Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Pella, Pelagonia. This arrangement, however, did not last long; and at the time of which we are now writing, Macedonia comprised the whole country north of Olympus, and Achaia the whole of what is the

present kingdom of Greece. When, therefore, Paul is at Philippi, Amphipolis, Thessalonica, and Berea, he is in Macedonia; when he visits Athens and Corinth, he is in Achaia.

When St. Paul set out from Philippi, having compelled the over-officious duumvirs to apologise for their arbitrary ruffianism, he had for his companion Silas only, so far as we know. That St. Luke was left behind at Philippi is clear from the sudden change in style. From "we" and "us" it passes again to "they" and "them," as he wrote before they came to Troas, and the first person is not resumed until the third journey, when, after naming several companions of St. Paul without including his own name, he reverts to the first person in "we sailed away from Philippi" (Acts xx. 6), which is the most unobtrusive but a very plain way of stating that the historian had joined the party again. Throughout this space of time there is just that absence of minute description which might be expected in the story of one who is only a narrator at second-hand, not an eye-witness. This interval covers a period of three or four years, during which we may be quite sure that St. Luke was not idle over his Master's work. It is conjectured, not without great probability, that he may have employed himself as a Christian physician on board the ships that plied between Philippi and Troas. Few professions are more suited to furnish a Christian man with opportunities of speaking with power on subjects of eternal interest than that of the physician. That St. Luke would be obliged to support himself is just as certain as that he would decline no opportunity of communicating the Good Tidings. Hence we have every inducement to believe that he both practised in his profession and preached the Gospel; and that he would do so with unshrinking firmness combined with manly modesty, the style and manner of both his books convince us.