Christians, men and women, that he might take them bound as prisoners to Jerusalem. "All that heard him were amazed," as they well might be; "and they said," and very naturally said, "Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief-priests?" How is this, then? "But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded "the Jews which dwelt at Damascus." The very people that he came to back up are the very people that he beats down; the very cause that he came to sustain, and to water with the blood of Christians, is the very cause that he now boldly and intrepidly impugns. I have no doubt that the rabbis said, "Saul, how inconsistent! What a shocking change of opinion; what a dreadful revolution of sentiment! People will say, you have no mind of your own!" But Paul had reasons for his change; and he had the power of making known those reasons; and the seizing of such a dialectician in the camp of the foe, and transferring him. to the camp of Jesus, was one of the brightest triumphs and most successful features in the whole history of the Gospel of Christ.

As we might naturally expect, Saul was to taste the cup that he himself had so often put to the Christians' lips. It is said, in the 23d verse, that 66 the Jews took counsel to kill him." Just what he had done to the Christians they were now about to do to him. "And they watched the gates day and night to kill him. Then the disciples took him, and”—oh! most humbling escape-" let him down by the wall in a basket;" ancient walls round cities having apertures, or openings; and through one of these he was let down

secretly. You must often have been struck with this fact, that the same God who is represented as doing a miracle for the safety of his people in one verse, is represented again as letting them escape by all sorts of ways that their own ingenuity suggested in another. The Acts of the Apostles are not like the Acts of the Bollandists—that is, the record of miracles performed by Romish saints. In the Acts of the Apostles, a miracle was done where a miracle was needed, for a great, specific, and worthy end; but in the Acts of the Bollandists, false miracles are so profuse, that a saint cannot walk, or speak, or sit down, or stand up, but miracles flash out like sparks from an electric jar; and he literally walks, and speaks, and eats, and drinks, amid perpetual miracles. And you have only to contrast the Acts of the Bollandists with the Acts of the Apostles, to see that the former are merely anile and superstitious lies; that the latter are the acts of men commissioned by God to make known his will. When Paul could escape by a basket through a window, God did not interpose that he might escape by a miracle.

Saul came to Jerusalem, we are told, after three years, as we find in another part of the New Testament; and "essayed to join himself to the disciples; but they were all afraid of him,”—and no wonder,— " and believed not that he was a disciple. But Barnabas," who is supposed by some to have been a very early friend of Paul, was acquainted with the whole matter. He knew well from the man, that whatever side he took up he would be honest. There was no dishonesty in Saul; he was an honest persecutor, and he was an honest apostle. And that is the sort

of men that one respects. If you be infidels, be out-and-out honest and determined infidels, and we respect you; if you be Christians, be out-and-out thorough Protestant, evangelical Christians, and all respect you. But be anything between, and you have all the inconsistency of the world, and all its sorrows and its vexations also. Just as in mathematics a straight line is the nearest way from one point to another, so in moral things, a straight course is always the nearest to the attainment of your end. Barnabas, knowing that Saul was never an impostor, never told falsehoods, that he was a thoroughly honest man, whatever he might be " took him, and brought him to the apostles," and evidently, after conferring with them, and explaining the whole matter to them, they received him, and made him welcome. And he continued to speak, not only eloquently, but boldly, in the name of the Lord Jesus. And he became a first-rate controversialist; "and he disputed against the Grecians,”— that is, the Hellenist Jews, who spoke the Greek tongue, but still Jews: and they, by way of gratitude to him for his zeal, "went about to slay him: which, when the brethren knew, they brought him down to Cæsarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus. Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea, and Galilee, and Samaria." It is supposed that, about this time, Caligula, the Roman emperor, having Judea as a province of the empire, had given command to one of his captains that his own statue should be erected in the holy place of the temple of Jerusalem. This was such a shocking piece of blasphemy to a Jew that all Judea was stirred at the very idea of it; and the Jews were so occupied in defending their own religion, that their attention

was withdrawn from the persecution of the Christians. And the result of this, as well as the effects of Paul's conversion, was, that "the churches"-there was not one church in Judea; every little gathering of God's people was a church—“ the churches had rest throughout all Judea, and Galilee, and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied."

CHAPTER IX. 31.

REST AND PEACE OF THE CHURCHES, AND REASONS OF IT—THE CHURCH, WHAT IS IT?-FOLDS AND FLOCK-RESPITE FROM PERSECUTION-EDIFICATION-PERSECUTION AND PURITY-PROGRESS-FEAR OF THE LORD-COMFORT-THE SPIRIT IMPROVES THE MEMORY-INCREASE OF BELIEVERS.

THERE seem to have been two great reasons why the churches, heretofore so bitterly persecuted, began to experience an interlude at least of outward and national peace. We have read the remarkable and impressive conversion of Saul, a conversion that is one of the most striking proofs of the inspiration of the Scriptures, and the reality of the Christian faith; and the conversion of so ruthless a persecutor of the saints of God into a preacher of that Christ whom formerly he opposed, must have been the removal of a very great oppressor of the church, and therefore, its introduction into a state of comparative if only momentary respite. We have stated that, about this very time, the Roman emperor Caligula directed and commanded his own image to be placed in the holy of holies in the temple of Jerusalem. This outrage, so blasphemous in the judgment of a Jew, so vexed and grieved, and roused them to resistance, that they were too concerned in repelling an aggression on themselves to waste their time, strength, and attention in persecuting the Christians. And these two events, one the result of the internal quarrels of the Jews, and the other a providential