civilized West. It needed a man of cultivated intellect and of high mental and moral qualifications. In Saul all the requisite conditions met.

In consequence of the rumour that Saul's life was sought by the Jews, the brethren brought him down (KATŃYAYOV) to Cæsarea Stratonis, on the coast (not to Cæsarea Philippi, further north, for which journey the word avýyayov, went up, would have been more correct), and thence they sent him on to Tarsus.

It is often asked how Saul went from Cæsarea to Tarsus, whether by sea, touching at Seleucia, the port of Antioch, or by the great coast road. Our knowledge of ancient roads, in countries visited by St. Paul, is chiefly derived from three Itineraries. The Antonine is a mere skeleton road-book, exhibiting the names of places and the distances between them. The Jerusalem Itinerary details the route from Bordeaux to the Holy City. The Peutinger Itinerary is the most remarkable of the three. It is a map of the then known world, twenty feet long by one wide, exhibiting the situations of places after a most distorted fashion. The towns on the great Roman roads east and west are delineated with tolerable correctness, those lying north and south of these roads quite out of all proportion. This map is of the eighth century, and was drawn upon parchment. It was discovered at Spires in the thirteenth century, and presented to the Emperor Maximilian I., out of whose library it was again lost, and then again found and lost several times, until it found a resting-place at last in the Imperial Library of Vienna. It was carefully copied and printed by Peutinger, a German antiquary, in the sixteenth century. A good map of the ancient roads of Palestine from all these Itineraries is given in Mr. Lewin's great work.

From Gal. i. 21, it appears that Saul came on this journey into "the regions of Syria and Cilicia." But Syria and

Cilicia, being politically united and geographically shut in by Mount Taurus, are often spoken of as one; and the arrival at Tarsus only might, according to some, be construed so as to satisfy the expression of "the regions of Syria and Cilicia." Yet the mention of the Churches of Judea being unacquainted with Saul by face, would discountenance the supposition that he visited places all along the coast.

This, however, is quite immaterial. To Tarsus we know the Apostle came at last, where we leave him six years, until A.D. 44, when Barnabas will come again to fetch him and bring him to Antioch.

"Then had the Churches rest;" not, as the words might almost imply, as a consequence of Saul's departure, but because the Jews were at this time so exceedingly troubled by the arrogant and impious order of Caius Caligula to set up a gilt bronze statue of himself, as an object of worship, in the Holy of Holies, that they forgot for a time to watch the rapid progress which the Gospel was now making. For the Churches of all Judea and Samaria and Galilee had peace and were edified, rising into a fair building of God, cemented by mutual love, walking in fear and in comfort,-magnificent antithesis! comfort, which is inward peace, and the fear of God which taketh away the fear of man.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CALLING OF THE GENTILES.

ACTS x., xi., to ver. 24.

A.D. 40 Claudius, Emperor-Herod Agrippa I., King-Vitellius, President of Syria-Theophilus, High Priest.

THE

"Far o'er the glowing western main
His wistful brow was upward raised,
Where, like an angel's train,

The burnished water blazed.

"The saint beside the ocean prayed,
The soldier in his chosen bower,
Where all his eye surveyed

Seemed sacred in that hour.

"Christian Year." Monday in Easter Week.

HE question is sometimes raised, What is the exact order of the events which we are now narrating? We have just been considering the arrival of Paul at Jerusalem, his introduction by Barnabas to Peter, and his enforced retirement to Tarsus. The inspired narrative then carries us with Peter to Lydda, where he healed Æneas; to Joppa, where he raised Tabitha or Dorcas, where he stayed with Simon the tanner, and whence he was sent for to Cæsarea. It seems scarcely right to endeavour to place these events in a different order from that which we find. The order of St. Luke seems natural and even logical. In the conference between Peter and Saul, the latter would of course open to his friend the revelation made to him in the Temple at Jerusalem (Acts xxii. 10), how he was to go forth

to the Gentiles; and however much Peter might marvel as a Jew, his mind would be prepared for the wonderful change in the course of God's providential dealings with mankind; and he would be the better fitted to receive a similar revelation in his own vision on the housetop, and understand the message of the deputation from Cornelius.

Now the field of our view will expand. We are no longer to tarry among Jews, with their narrow prejudices, but to visit the great cities of the Gentiles,-Antioch, Athens, Rome,-and see how the Gospel sped there.

The tenth chapter of the Acts opens at Cæsarea, sometimes distinguished from the Cæsarea Philippi of the Gospels as Cæsarea Stratonis, from its ancient tower of Strato; sometimes as Cæsarea Palestina. It was a truly magnificent city, built by the sea-coast, which of itself was a circumstance that distinguished it from all Hebrew cities, not one of which lay by the sea. The great cities of Jerusalem, Shechem, Hebron, Capernaum, all lay far from the sea-coast. Solomon's only port of Ezion-Geber was far from the land of the Hebrews, in the tongue of the Red Sea (1 Kings ix. 26). Not a single port of the Hebrews is ever mentioned but Joppa, where Hiram king of Tyre sent his rafts of timber for the Temple (2 Chron. ii. 16), and whence Jonah sailed for Tarshish (Jonah i. 3). It was the praise of Jerusalem that she was not a seaport: "Then the glorious Lord will be unto us a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby " (Isa. xxxiii. 21). This was the Jewish policy. But it does not seem to have been adopted under Divine direction, since Zebulon was to have been "for a haven of ships" (Gen. xlix. 13).

Herod the Great, the founder of this noble city, had lavished upon it all the resources of his power and the splendour of his magnificence. But the Romans had fixed their seat here, finding it the most convenient centre from

which to watch and to rule that troublesome possession. It was therefore filled with temples and embellished with statues, giving it the appearance of an entirely heathen city. Yet a powerful Jewish element existed in the place; and Josephus tells of a certain tumult which took place later on, in the reign of Nero, between the hostile Jewish and heathen populations, which had to be quelled by military power. But of all that Roman and Jewish splendour not a trace remains, except confused heaps of broken columns and fallen walls and mounds of rubbish. From Cæsarea to Joppa, a distance of thirty miles, there lay a populous district, teeming with life and prosperous with commercial activity, which is now utter desolation. Yet it was from this very spot that the great wave of Gospel preaching to the nations of the world set forth, so much as nineteen centuries ago! Alas for the wicked indifference of man, that from Cæsarea to Yokohama there is not now single Christian land!

Yet, what a magnificent starting-point was Cæsarea! A city named after the Cæsars; garrisoned by the soldiers of Rome, officered by a man bearing the noble name of Cornelius, than which no Roman ever bore a prouder; for were not the Scipios, the Syllas, and the mother of the Gracchi of the great Cornelian house,—a family ranking as with us the Stanleys, the Grosvenors, or the Russells?

The Roman armies that held the world in subjection resembled in their composition the armies by which we hold India. Purely Roman families sent out of their best blood, to command native levies in Gaul or Germany or Palestine. At Cæsarea, however, lay a certain select body, consisting probably wholly of Roman soldiers, called the Italian cohort or band (σπείρη ἡ καλουμένη Ιταλική),* to distinguish it from the merely Syrian bands. It was * "Cohors militum Italicorum voluntaria."-"Gruter Inscr.," p. 434. + St. Luke says cautiously, called "the Italian band."