Acts 18

Acts 18:1-23

Section 4. (Acts 18:1-23.)“Weak things of the world.” It is to the Corinthians that Paul writes at an after-time, of how God has called the weak things of the world to put to shame the things that are mighty (1 Corinthians 1:27); and they found in themselves the evidence of this. The two epistles to the Corinthians display them strikingly in this character. The first epistle especially, in contrast with that to the Ephesians, which sets before us the Church in its heavenly aspect, shows us the Church in the world, exposed to the influences which beset it from that trinity of evil which perplex the fallen creature. The first part of the epistle (chaps. 1 -10) shows the Corinthians the need of fencing off these; as it too clearly manifests also how weak had been their resistance to them. Corinth was indeed a perfect type of the world as governed by the lusts that rule and rage in hearts away from God -of “the corruption that is in the world through lust” (2 Peter 1:4). Corinth was a proverb, even among the light-hearted Greeks, for this; and those who had been called out from it by the victorious grace of God were still in danger, often imminent indeed, of being again overcome by it.

Yet here, as not in philosophic Athens, the Lord had much people. As in His life on earth He was known as the Friend of sinners, and Himself declared that He was the Saviour of the lost, so do we find the gospel true to its character as it goes forth here. In the haunts of vice it found the sick who needed the physician, and could bear also to be told that they needed one. Among the Corinthians, rather than the Athenians, would be those satiated* with the pleasures, convinced of the vanity of a world which they well knew. Here was the very place in which the contrast between this and what the gospel offered could be best told out. If those called were the weak things of the world, how weak also was that world itself; which yet held so many in its bondage! \

1. The apostle departs from Athens, then, and comes to Corinth; and the spirit in which he entered this busy, rich, luxurious city, he himself has declared. He came with a deep, almost oppressive sense of his responsibility as bringing the testimony of God into the midst of a people so needy, while so alive to their own interest, accustomed to make keen estimate of the wares offered to them, and with every allurement of earth in earnest competition with that which he had to offer, a Saviour already rejected by the world and cast out, condemned and crucified. Well might one so absolutely devoted to his work of ministry, with the burden of souls so upon him, be “in weakness and fear, and in much trembling,” as, fresh from his disappointment at Athens, he contemplated the scene before him now. With such an one this could only issue in a realization more complete than ever of the One Power which alone could be competent to lay hold of and arrest these busy idlers, and bring them to face themselves and God. Jesus Christ the Crucified was indeed his only theme; but if He were the One rejected by the world, He was also the One whom the Spirit glorified: and thus his preaching was in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. In a city in which oratory and persuasive speech would be peculiarly in requisition, there he relied upon no excellency of speech or of wisdom, used no allurement, but leaned wholly upon the Spirit of God. There was one adaptation to the state of things at Corinth, however, which is noted for our attention. Not indeed that he practised it nowhere else, for he refers to his doing so afterwards at Ephesus (Acts 20:34), as in the two epistles to the Thessalonians he shows us that he had done among them. Still it is here for the first time that it is mentioned in the Acts that he labored for his maintenance, and the character of his work also. We are certainly intended to recognize here the suitability of this in wealthy and commercial Corinth. He would not have them think of the gospel as among the wares in which they traded. Money could not buy the priceless gift of God; nor should they be able to think, even for a moment, that he sought what was theirs in anywise.

No, he sought themselves only, and in that love of Christ in which He had become poor for men, who was so rich, that they by His poverty might be made rich. Thus Paul in Corinth would take nothing of the Corinthians; for which he justifies himself afterwards in both epistles (1 Corinthians 9:12-18; 2 Corinthians 12:13-18). It is not without meaning, certainly, that here also, in a place so typical of the world in its highest energy, we should be told that Paul’s occupation was that of tent-making. Spiritually this needs no interpretation. It is what grace would teach every redeemed soul, as it taught Paul also to serve men in this very attitude of independence of them. Surely there is nothing also like the tent as a symbol of such independence; he that is but a pilgrim in the world can find ability for this, as he cannot who seeks his home in it. While his companions, names are equally significant of the faith which of old has used these travelers’ ways: Priscilla or Prisca (“ancient” or “venerable”) reminding us, as the apostle does in Hebrews, that “by faith the elders obtained a good report,” and Aquila (“eagle”) of its soaring habit and keen sight. This last is a man of Pontus, or “the deep;” as he that has been in the depth alone learns to rise above his natural condition, and it is “they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, -these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep.” All here fits well together, and is of easy interpretation to those who can believe that the word of God deals so much in parables, and that it will bear the microscope after a fashion like this. 2. According to his common practise, Paul begins his testimony in the synagogue, addressing himself there, however, to both Jews and Greeks. From the former he gets little except opposition, going on to open blasphemy; which provokes the apostle on his part to announce his purpose, as at Pisidian Antioch before, to go to the Gentiles. He withdraws, therefore, to the house of a proselyte named Justus, adjoining the synagogue. The “just” was the characteristic title of saints under the law; but now he who would be with the just must be outside the synagogue. Here the work in Corinth seems fairly to begin: Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believes, with all his house; and many of the Corinthians follow him in the confession of their faith.

Thus grace works, in contrast with the law, although it remains true that “not many wise men according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.” None the less the Spirit wrought; and whatever those were who were brought together, we know that they came behind in no gift (1 Corinthians 1:7): God needed not the assistance of the world’s endowments although He does not despise or set aside that which has been of His own communication who is Creator of all (Matthew 25:15). They are called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ, from out of and yet in the midst of a world that lieth in the wicked one. 3. Here, as at Troas the vision of a man had appeared to him to invite his entrance into Europe, so now the Lord Himself appears to Paul to encourage him to remain. By revelation, as we learn from Galatians (Galatians 2:2), he had gone up to Jerusalem, to vindicate there the rights of the Gentiles as against the zealots for the law. He had carried thence with him the letter in which the Jewish leaders renounced explicitly what authority in this matter they might be supposed to have. Henceforth all the open testimony of God that we hear of is against his persistence in special Jewish ministrations. He had been told explicitly that the Jews would not receive his testimony concerning Christ, and the twelve had assigned to him the Gentile work, as they themselves assumed the responsibility of that among the Jews (Galatians 2:7-9). It is impossible not to connect all this with what we shall have in the after-history. But the vision now is only encouragement. He is expressly guaranteed against harm, and assured of much people belonging to the Lord in this Gentile city, in which the Jews had shown already their opposition in so marked a way, that he must needs turn from them. Corinth was a place naturally discouraging enough; and with his heart so engaged with Israel as he himself has assured us that it was, the special seal now put upon his work in this place is very significant. Accordingly he continues for a year and six months teaching the word of God among them. 4. The Jews display their enmity more and more: and all that he has to experience in the way of persecution arises from this cause. It is they who bring him before the Gentile judgment-seat; and, availing themselves of the permission accorded to them to worship God after their own manner, they complain of him as inciting to an unlawful worship. It is their own law, however, of which they are thinking, and not the Roman one, as Gallio easily discerns; they were never noted for obedience to their Gentile rulers, though for their particular purpose they might profess to have no other king but Caesar. It was a mere hypocritical plea, as every one knew, and he treats it as such. Doubtless for him it was a question but of words and names, which he can meet with the most philosophic indifference!

Think of the weariness, even to a Stoic, of being a judge in such matters! How little he knew of Him who even by means like these was sheltering His people. The accusers were driven from the judgment-seat. The multitude, going further than the judge, beat the ruler of the synagogue before it. But Gallio was still indifferent. 5. Thus protected according to the Lord’s assurance, the apostle still remains a considerable time at Corinth; but nothing more is related to us than the fact. This is the end of his progress westward; and from Cenchrea, the port of Corinth, he sets sail for Syria, taking Ephesus, however, by the way. At Cenchrea we have a circumstance given which has divided the opinions of commentators, -that of the vow on the part of one of these travelers. Lechler ventures even to say that it is “involved in an obscurity which will never be removed;” but this is an accusation of an inspired writer which only shows for how little inspiration counts with many professedly orthodox today. That there is difficulty in deciding more than one question with regard to it, is quite another matter: the same may be said of multitudes of things in Scripture, which give us needful exercise, and that is all; surely a thing which we cannot expect to be saved from. To say, it cannot be cleared up, is to say, either that Luke meant nothing by it, or meant us to learn nothing (which is practically the same thing), or else that he blundered so painfully as to miss entirely the object for which he has written! The first question we have to ask is, who is it of whom it is recorded here that “he shaved his head in Cenchrea: for he had -or, had had -a vow”? On the one hand Aquila is the one who stands immediately before; on the other, Paul (it is urged) is the principal subject here, and before the mind of the Spirit all through, rather than Aquila. Both these things, however, may be fully allowed without the consequence which is pressed as following. Paul’s relation to the vow may be primary or secondary; it may be related to him simply as having to do with one of his company who, if not converted by his means, was yet in fullest connection and sympathy with him. It has been rightly noticed also, as it would seem, that in the passage Priscilla being named first brings Aquila into that place in which he would most naturally appear as the maker of the vow. Still, in two of Paul’s epistles (Romans 16:3; 2 Timothy 4:19) it has been objected, that the same order of the names occurs; and here we may believe that the reason is one of personal character and usefulness, in which the wife may have been in advance of her husband; and though in ver. 2 Aquila has the precedence, this is not at all certain as to ver. 26. We can only say therefore, that according to the structure of the sentence, the maker of the vow would seem to be Aquila. Another argument to the same end is obvious, that we might more easily understand this vow of Aquila than of Paul. He is introduced to us at Corinth simply as a certain Jew, with whom Paul works because they were of the same trade, not necessarily of the same faith. If he were a late convert, no one could wonder at his having been under a vow when brought to Christ: a vow which may not till now have expired, the shaving of the head, as we naturally judge from the analogy of Nazariteship (though this were not it), took place at the expiration, and not at the commencement. All this would fit together in the simplest manner thus, and provoke no question. It has been said that the record of it would have no value either; but this assuredly is not well considered. A charge against Paul on the part of the Jews was, as we shall soon have witness, that he taught all the Jews among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, nor to walk after the customs (Acts 21:21). The evidence of Aquila with his shaven head would be in direct opposition to this. Let Paul be the subject on the other hand, and there is very great difficulty. It is of no use to urge, as has been done, his purification afterwards at Jerusalem, which was undoubtedly a step taken to conciliate the Christian Jews, and conformable enough to his avowed principle to be to those under the law as under the law, that he might gain those who were under the law. A vow was a voluntary act between the person and God, not required of any, and therefore which could give no offence in its non-observance; there was no breach of law in not assuming it. Aquila might have assumed it in his pre-Christian state, when he would naturally let it run on to its termination and have honored Moses in that which was to him as a Christian a thing indifferent; but how could Paul’s doctrine of being “dead to the law by the body of Christ” (Romans 7:4) consist with the deliberate taking up of that which no conscience of another required, and which, if of his own free choice, would be the going back to build up again the things he had destroyed? Why then should we attribute that to the apostle to which certainly no necessity of the language here obliges us, and for which we have presently to seek all possible excuse in vain? The ethical argument is after all surely the decisive one, unless we are to be content to make an unasked for sacrifice of the apostle’s character to show a liberality which is by no means that, in things that are not our own. Paul then came with his companions to Ephesus, where he left them; he himself going on. But in the meanwhile he embraced the opportunity which the visit gave him to reason in the synagogue with the Jews, according to his wont. Here he found response in such a way that they would willingly have delayed his departure to minister to their need. But it is indeed strange to find that he is not ready to stay; and why? If the words that are in the common version be really part of the text, it is because he must by all means keep the coming feast at Jerusalem! If the words should not be there, he merely promises, if God will, to return.

However this be, Jerusalem is in his heart, as we see by that which follows; although if it be not in the questioned words, the name itself is nowhere found. Indeed, in any case the narrative here is brief and as it were hurried. One cannot see what is really accomplished. Instead of any word about keeping the feast, he runs up from Caesarea, salutes the assembly (we have to infer what assembly, -perhaps to take it as if for him at the moment there were scarcely an assembly elsewhere), yet he does not stay; we do not see what, if anything, is accomplished: the greatly desired visit has a strange unsatisfactoriness about it. It may well be, as we realize from what takes place at a later time, that he cannot stay there; he goes down to Antioch, from whence the Spirit had called him to go forth at first; his second missionary journey is thus over. In this sudden close of what has been so fruitful and blessed a labor -where neither at Jerusalem or Antioch do we read of anything commensurate with the rest at all -it seems to me that we have the sad foreshadow of that which afterwards closes the active ministry of the great apostle of the Gentiles in a Roman prison. His heart seems breaking over Israel; and Israel alone has no welcome for him. Israel is his betrayer, and the very hope as to her which it seems he cannot resist, but of the fruitlessness of which he has been warned long since, betrays and leads him to disaster. He is in fellowship with the heart at least, if not fully the mind, of that dear Lord and Master, into whose spirit he had drunk so largely. Here his heart yearns with His over Jerusalem. By and by he will have to say with Him, as in the epistle to the Hebrews, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate!” This leave-taking of a beckoning field like that of Ephesus, this hurried visit to the unnamed city, from which, after a salutation to the assembly, he is forced away again, is touching indeed. In the near future he is to yield to his affections a costlier sacrifice. For the present he is spared for new fields of labor and large fruit.

Acts 18:23-20

Section 5. (Acts 18:23-28; Acts 19:1-41; Acts 20:1-38.)The Assembly with God, and its responsibility. We are now come to the last labors of the apostle among the Gentiles in liberty, with the constraint of Christ’s love alone upon him; -so far, at least, as the Spirit has been pleased to declare them to us. His testimony did not, of course, end here, and through his bonds might acquire a character and power it could not else have. That God was over all, and in all for blessing, needs no demonstration; but this testimony in bonds has another character than that we have been considering. If the apostle were set free afterwards, and made his wished for journey into Spain, we have no account of it; nor is the account that is here given incomplete: it is sufficient for the purpose of the Spirit who has given it, which is not a biography of Paul or any other. The narrative before us has evidently quite another design than this: it is the history of the founding of the Church as the company of the saved, whether Jews or Gentiles, brought out from the Jewish house of bondage and given to enjoy the liberty of grace. Hence we shall find, according to the manner of Scripture elsewhere, that this last portion of the ministration of the mystery will be (whatever else may be in it) very much of the nature of a review and summary of its leading features -not of doctrine but of history -while carrying us on also beyond to the future so full of responsibility and peril, of a divine testimony once more committed to man, whose course has been hitherto little but continued failure.

The fact that there would be this is not shirked for a moment, but clearly announced. There would be again the display of sad, mysterious wreckage of all that man could wreck; although God’s purposes could not but go on to completion. The epistles, as we know, develop this failure fully. Along with this, as is natural, there is yet a manifestation of the power of God as connected with this testimony, -a power supreme over all the power of the enemy: the failure is not from any failure in this respect, whatever may be the conflict, -a conflict of which the epistle to Ephesus, the assembly mainly before us in all this part, warns us, and of the conditions of it. Ephesus is indeed the representative assembly everywhere in the New Testament. In the epistle we find the full doctrine of the Church committed to it, not as in those to the Corinthians, as a communion of saints on earth, but in its heavenly character. In Revelation it comes before us in the first place as a. vessel of testimony upon the earth. The two epistles exhibit it in contrasted spiritual condition: the first as faithful in Christ; the second as threatened with withdrawal of the candlestick, except it repent. We need not wonder to find this representative character attaching to it in the history also. We see it in its first freshness, and with its endowment of power; but with its responsibility also, and the sad prophecy of what would follow the removal of the apostle from the midst; when grievous wolves would be successors to so true a shepherd, and from among themselves would men arise speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. This, then, is the Deuteronomy of the Acts, with which the history of the “dispensation of the mystery” concludes, so far as active labors are concerned of him to whom it was first committed. The last division of the book has a character of its own which we must consider elsewhere.

1. That which characterizes the whole account of Ephesus as we have it here is the uniqueness of power manifested. It is at the very seat of the enemy’s power, as seen in the notorious idolatry there, the worship of Artemis or Diana, in her image that fell down from heaven, as well as in the demon-possessions, sorcery and magic that abounded there. Even on this account must the power of God be put forth in a decisive way. Special miracles are wrought by the hands of Paul; and the very demons themselves become unwilling witnesses, in the mastery shown over all pretenders to that to which where real they must needs be subject. (1) The sources of this power are also carefully put before us. In Apollos we see the knowledge of Christ in its effect; in the other disciples of John the witness of the Spirit characteristic of Christianity. Here plainly is the secret of the whole matter, -the supreme Name, and He who is come to glorify the absent Lord. Iii the case of Apollos the Spirit is not mentioned; yet is He freely working in a testimony not confined to Paul, and glorifying therefore the more, Paul’s blessed Master. (a) First, however, we are shown Paul himself starting fresh from Antioch, in the energy of a love which, caring for all, carries him once more over ground he had visited on his second journey; taking it up now in an orderly manner, so as to overlook none of those who had then been brought to Christ, of whom (in Galatia at least), there were many, and, at present, earnest disciples. Of Phrygia we know nothing except that it had been visited throughout; but the implication is that there also there were many; for whom now he was caring rather than raising up new assemblies. Meanwhile we hear of a notable arrival at Ephesus in the person of an Alexandrian Jew, from a place well-known already in connection with Philo and his allegorization of the Scriptures, by and by to be more noted for the similar, though Christian, school of Origen. But if Philo were his master, Apollos had been led on beyond him by the voice of Israel’s preacher of repentance and of Jesus also, as far as proclaimed by him. He knew no further, doctrinally, whatever he may have known as to the facts of His death and resurrection. The Christian gospel was to him unknown. Yet what he knew he was zealous in making known, and with a wealth of proof from the Old Testament. Thus he began to speak boldly in the synagogue, -a remarkable case of faith manifesting itself amid many hindrances. How much perplexity for a man with but Jewish hopes, Messiah come and Israel not being gathered! a message broken off, without completion! When we remember John’s own questioning from Herod’s prison, how striking it is to find so long after a disciple of John with faith in the Messiah he had announced, who yet might seem to have disappeared without the accomplishment of what He came for! But his heart carried his faith through all these difficulties; and the voice that spoke at Ephesus did not falter in spite of all. We can understand then the joy of heart in one so loyal to the truth when Aquila and Priscilla took him to them, and made known to him the truth which both removed his difficulties and perfected with more glorious hopes that which already so possessed his soul. Doubtless it brought for a time his testimony at Ephesus to a close, while the former teacher became once more a learner at the feet of Him whom his faith amid whatever obscurity had yet recognized and confessed; and it is no wonder if the large Christian assembly at Corinth abounding in gift and in such near connection with the commercial centre of Asia, attracted the eager disciple. There at any rate he soon desired to be, where his eagerness and boldness rapidly made him a leader and helper of those who were in Christ before him. Publicly and completely he confuted the unbelieving Jews, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ. The part taken by Priscilla, a woman, in this instruction given to Apollo; noted as it naturally has been and rightly, still deserves emphatic recognition. Did she go beyond her place? and does the prohibition of a woman’s teaching by that Paul, one of whose company she had so long been, rebuke her conduct on this occasion? Nay, Paul it is who in naming these two whom he so highly valued, both in the comparatively early epistle to Rome, and in the later one to Timothy, puts Priscilla before Aquila. We may be sure that neither did she go beyond the place that God had given her, nor did the apostle mean to seal the lips of believing women, so that they should not help others with the truth they have received. On the contrary, the communication of that which one has received is as much the obligation of a woman as of a man. The knowledge of the truth is one of those various gifts of God which, according to the apostle’s exhortation (1 Peter 4:10), brings under the responsibility of ministering it. Nay, if the heart be right with God, it must be so: the full spring must needs overflow; out of the abundance of the heart the mouth must speak. This does not constitute teaching in the forbidden sense, even where, as in this case, there is a distinct purpose to set forth the way of the Lord. It by no means necessarily involves the authority, publicity or place of the teacher, which few men have, whom no one would think of depriving of their undoubted right to speak of Christ to the utmost of their ability. Without being an evangelist, one may evangelize; and so, without being or claiming to be a teacher, one may set forth the truth as God has enabled to apprehend it; thus a woman also without getting out of the place which the Creator has given to the woman. We shall find the suited place to speak fully of this elsewhere; and what one would rather press here, and what needs much to be pressed, is the example of this noble woman in seeking to make another partake in that which had filled her own soul with peace and happiness. How largely is it true of men even, and much more of women, that the idea of having no responsibility in the matter of instructing others becomes an excuse for little regard to be instructed themselves, in any full and accurate way, in truths which are for all, and for one as much as another! It is conceded that it would be a shame for the teacher not to be taught; but they are not teachers; therefore they need not be accurately taught! But really it cannot be maintained that fulness or accuracy should be required of the teacher, if it is little matter in regard to those taught by him. As a teacher, what can one want which he does not need to teach? Have not all Christians need of all Christian truth?

Alas, it is carelessness of heart that pleads so, whether in man or woman; and thus it is that, when Satan would bring in falsehood under some plausible disguise, the mass of Christians themselves are so slow to recognize it, if they recognize it at all; thus it is that, with all our vaunting of an open Bible, the Bible is yet but little really open to us! With all its fulness fur us, it is as to practical possession but a thing of shreds and tatters! And again, if uneducated teachers make uneducated disciples, the converse is also true, and unteachable disciples soon and of necessity make unskilled teachers. Why should they be skilled in that which their hearers have no heart to learn? And thus the wheel turns along a sharp decline! (b) The case of Apollos is followed -and surely with meaning in the connection -by that of other disciples of John; but who plainly were not companions, still less equals of Apollos. By the latter Jesus was known, however imperfectly, but the twelve soon after found by the apostle have to learn the testimony which John bore to Jesus. Of the coming of the Spirit they have, of course, not heard; and that is the purport of their answer to the question put: they do not speak of the existence of the Spirit, but of His being on earth, -of the baptism of the Spirit being an actual accomplishment. But this with Jews, from Pentecost and on, had followed their baptism to the Name of Jesus; Paul therefore asks to what then they had been baptized; and Jesus being declared to them, they are baptized to His Name. Even then it is only upon the apostle’s hands being laid upon them that the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and they speak with tongues and prophesy. Thus what Peter and John did at Samaria the apostle of the Gentiles does now in regard to Jews.

Israel seems to be at a greater distance than formerly from God, and authority is not recognized in Jerusalem, but as connected with one whose testimony Israel will not receive, but who has been sent by the Lord from heaven, with a heavenly testimony which Israel has never had made to them. Power is in the Risen Jesus, and is actualized for men in the Spirit His Witness. The prophesying reminds us of the new intercourse with God, and the tongues of a gospel for the nations round.*
(2) In suited connection with this, we now find separation taking place between the Christian assembly and the unbelieving Jews. The apostle continues his labor in the school of a Greek, Tyrannus. God in absolute sovereignty, in a way which to the Jew might be in disrepute, but which was forced upon Him by their sin, while it was in fact the sovereignty of grace to sinners, is taking His place among the Gentiles. Thence the Word goes freely forth, so that all in Asia hear it, the word of the rejected Lord, -both Jews and Greeks. The position of the assembly is clearly defined, and there is a wide and fruitful testimony.*
(3) The power of God is now manifested in an extraordinary manner in connection with Paul, the minister of this new and heavenly grace, so that napkins (or sweat-cloths) and aprons from his skin -both the signs of a toil which sin has necessitated -not only healed disease but expelled demons from the possessed. So has love’s labor wrought through Him who came under the penalty of sin to heal spiritual disease and destroy the power of Satan. So manifest was the power of the Name of Jesus that certain wandering Jews, exorcists, undertook to use it as a charm, to conjure with. Seven sons of a Jewish high-priest, named Sceva (or Skeua, “implement, instrument”?) did this, but with a result for them as unfortunate as unforeseen. “Jesus I know,” answered the demon, “and Paul I am acquainted with; but who are ye?” And the demoniac fell upon them, mastered and drove them, naked and wounded, from the house.* Thus a startling witness from another side caused fear to fall upon all who dwelt at Ephesus. The effect was great in the confession and abjuring of their magic arts on the part of numbers who brought and publicly burned their books. “It was precisely in Ephesus that magic, strictly so called, held its seat. It had been originally connected with the worship of Artemis” (Lechler).**
Power, then, characterizes the work in Ephesus; and this, as already said, is in close relation to the view of the assembly in its responsibility which is here depicted. Ephesus means probably “desirable,” and as the object of Christ’s affection the assembly cannot lack on His side. Power cannot be wanting to it, if it is not wanting to itself. Evil from without cannot prevail against it, except it withdraw itself from the security of the divine shield. It is the ransomed and redeemed of Him who is gone up on high, having led captivity captive, and spoiled principalities and powers, triumphing over them in His Cross. “If God be for us, who shall be against us?” Alas, is this Ephesus, thus defended, thus endowed, still to illustrate the mutability of man in all that has been entrusted to him? is it to furnish after all the most signal illustration of the warning, “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?” 2. The apostle’s labors are near their close at Ephesus, and he has in mind another visit to Macedonia and Achaia, before once more his longing heart carries him again to Jerusalem. After that he says, he must see Rome; and he was indeed to see it, but under what different circumstances from what he could have imagined now. How little he could have anticipated those years in prison, cut off from the work he loved, and then as a prisoner to see Rome also! It was a foreshadow doubtless of what awaited his gospel from legal opposition, and then from the world-power, with which in this respect it was allied. For himself we have already seen how he had been warned of the uselessness of his efforts in behalf of his misguided countrymen, and how he had been turned back on his last attempt to reach them, from the city itself, without anything attained.

This time we know that he goes back as the bearer of a large offering from the Gentile Christians to the assemblies of Judea, which was to be an acknowledgement of the great debt they owed them, and a help to greater oneness of feeling between them. Yet was every fresh success among the Gentiles, accompanied as it was by a fresh manifestation of hostility on the part of the unbelieving Jews, increasing the bitterness of national enmity against himself, and the danger to himself at every return among them. Danger to himself was indeed never a deterrent: he was “ready not to be bound only, but to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13). But would that sacrifice avail? and what of the growing work in those fields afar off, to which with the distinct warning that Israel would not receive his testimony, he had been expressly sent? It is noteworthy how the claims of the Gentile assemblies are pressed upon him at this time. Of the state of the large assembly at Corinth he hears just at this time; the fruit of this for us we have through the overruling hand of God in those two epistles in which the dangers of the Church in the world its opposite are so vividly pictured for us. After this the conflict with Judaism in Galatia calls forth the letter in which he sharply defines the contrast between the principles of law and grace. The epistle to the Romans either before or after this, written in view of the hindrances he had found to coming to them, lays down for them and for us the great foundations of Christian position, and explains the grafting of Gentiles into the good olive in place of the Jewish branches broken off through unbelief. The state of Corinth probably delays him now, while sending Timothy and Erastus into Macedonia, and now suddenly there breaks out at Ephesus a tumult of opposition against him which threatens even life. The history of this outbreak shows us the power of the prince of this world sustained by the worldly interests which love to shelter themselves under the cover of religion. A religion men must have; yet how thin a varnish of it will suffice for the crowd, while the crowd again will suffice for the religion. What an absurd thing to deny what all Asia and the world worship! Really men believe in men: and though you may think of the individuals what you please, the mass must be judged differently. Thus it can come to be heresy that they are no gods who are made with hands; and the town clerk can shame a multitude out of treating it seriously. This, though Demetrius and his fellows are keener sighted through their nearer concern in what affects their craft, and this is the first and inciting argument; though all can feel that they gain in greatness from their magnificent goddess, and their pride can work alongside of their grosser interests.

In fact the cry that unites the mob is “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” though, when they come together, it is hard to translate this into an intelligible expression. Alexander the Jew (perhaps the coppersmith of whom Paul speaks elsewhere) cannot for that reason head the crowd against the refusers of idolatry, and confusion reigns; until the town-clerk with his wonder at what is not in question, and his plea for men who are neither sacrilegious nor blasphemers, backed by the suggestion of Rome’s strong way of suppressing a riot, brings in order and dismisses the crowd. Paul is kept out of the way, even by the kindly advice of some of those in high place among the religious functionaries, who realize the nature of what has called the assemblage together. And indeed conscience is not in the crowd but in the individual; the Lord, as we remember, had often to scatter the crowds; Paul recognizes that he has no place here, and escapes their hands. Such is the world into which Christianity has come -a kingdom of truth appealing to the true, claiming obedience at all personal cost, prostrating all idolatry before the ark of God. Outwardly its aspect may be greatly changed, but its features still remain, and the inevitable conflict. “All that is of the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, are not of the Father, but are of the world.” And again, “In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” 3. The journey of the apostle through Macedonia and Achaia, with all its interest for us, is passed over in the briefest way. How much would we fain have known of Philippi and Thessalonica and Berea, of Athens and of Corinth! but Scripture approves itself in all this most unlike mere human history. After Paul’s leaving Ephesus, a few words suffice for the journey through Macedonia, in which we have not even the names of the places he visited, or the time spent. In Greece (Achaia) not even Corinth is mentioned, although we are told that he was there three months. Then the machinations of the Jews, his constant enemies, decide him to return by way of Macedonia, and we are told the names of his companions,* more numerous than usual, who accompany him back to Asia; that they went before, however, from Philippi to Troas, waiting for him there. At Philippi, as we discern once more by the change of pronoun, Luke joins him once again, after an interval of between six and seven years, and sailing from Philippi, they come in five days to Troas.
Seven days are spent at Troas, and terminate with the first day of the week, on which we find the disciples gathered together to break bread, and Paul, ready to depart on the morrow, pours out his heart to them till midnight. It is surely not, as some would have us consider it, an ordinary meal at which they gather, which would deprive the time specified of all its significance, and indeed the breaking of bread itself. On the other hand, with the first day of the week, the resurrection day, there are connected how many joyful and tender memories for the Christian heart! The seventh day rest of the old creation has now given place to that which speaks of a new beginning out of death, death itself yielding to life which has death behind it, and is a life eternal. Instead of a rest when the week of labor is over, it is a rest beginning and characterizing the blessedness it ushers in. The legal principle, “do and live,” is exchanged in it for the evangelical one, “live and do.” The seventh day is a command; the first day is a day of privilege; and how significant it is that, whereas in the Old Testament prophets the observance of the sabbath is again and again urged upon the people as a condition of blessing, in the New Testament epistles it is only once mentioned, and that to say, “Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days” (Colossians 2:16). The things with which it is classed are a convincing testimony of how it is regarded. The breaking of bread was that for which the believers at Troas were assembled, and not even to hear the apostle, great as the privilege of this might be. The language implies that this was an ordinary meeting to remember the Lord in His death, at which the apostle took occasion to address them. Upon the Lord’s day they observed the Lord’s Supper. The day is evidently what is styled this in the book of Revelation (Revelation 1:10), which is not the prophetic “day of the Lord,” for this could not be applied at any rate to the first three chapters there; besides which it is another expression, literally “the Dominical day,” as the Supper is (1 Corinthians 11:20) “the Dominical Supper.” What day but the first day of the week has the Lord stamped as His? the day hallowed by His appearance as risen in the assembly of His disciples; the day in which He hailed them as His brethren, and breathed on them that they might receive the Holy Spirit. That first day made Him their Lord in a glory unknown hitherto; and that title, “the Lord’s day,” conveys to us the very essence of its blessedness. He who was under death is victorious over it; He who was under our sins is risen for ever free; and when Thomas is bidden to reach out his hand and put it into His side, the glad cry of his heart in response is “My Lord and my God!” Fit it is, then, that the Lord’s Supper should go with the Lord’s day; with the feast of Resurrection, the joy of the Remembrance. The death which He has left behind we cannot leave behind: His resurrection glorifies and does not efface it; the myrrh and aloes perfume His garments still (Psalms 45:8; John 19:39-40). Up in the glory of heaven He is seen by the hearts of His redeemed as a “Lamb slain” still (Revelation 5:6). How much depends upon our remembrance here! How suited a time for the departing apostle to address his farewell words to those he is of necessity leaving to bear their own burden of responsibility as the purchased of the precious blood of Christ! Upon the fulness and constancy of this remembrance rests all the hope of the future of the Church as His witness upon earth until He comes. In the joy of resurrection to show forth His death, -that is the responsibility; to realize this is to find power to sustain it. Upon such a fruitful theme no wonder that the apostle should prolong his speech till midnight, and beyond. But at midnight it is that a significant event occurs.

In the upper room in which he is speaking, lighted up with many lights, but in a window looking out into the darkness, Eutychus, the “prosperous,” sleeps, as in such places of outlook prosperity can induce sleep, soothed, alas, by words that once had interest, but out of which the meaning has now died. So sleeping, he falls out of the window to the ground, and is taken up dead.

Until this word, we might easily take all this, (however literally a fact, as none will question,) to be yet an allegorical description of a soul’s decline and fall from truth once really and savingly known. The lighted room in the midst of surrounding darkness, the windows, avenues into the darkness of the outside world, the youth even of the sleeper (it is to the young man that John speaks specifically when he says, “Love not the world”), his very name, Eutychus, pointing out the seduction of prosperity, the consequent sleep in this place of peril, which in fact leads to his fall, -all this reads with perfect consistency, and there would seem no difficulty in understanding the warning conveyed, until we hear this last word, “taken up dead,” while he that believeth on Christ can never die. Yet here an exceptional word is spoken, -a word that we hear nowhere uttered as to a dead man. The apostle goes down, and falling upon him, and embracing him, says, “Be not troubled, for his life is in him.” But one with his life in him is not what we would ordinarily call dead. Does this then simply speak of life now restored by the power of God which has wrought through Paul? I own that this is what one would naturally think; and in this case an interpretation of it in the way suggested is not to be thought of.

We must then accept the modification that it represents the lapse of one not savingly, but only superficially impressed; and we might think of such as are, in Jude’s strong language, “twice dead,” -dead in nature, and now dead by apostasy. Such a warning would be indeed awfully solemn; but in the case of which Jude speaks he does not seem to intimate any possibility of recovery such as we see in Eutychus.

Doubtless there are different grades, however, of cases seemingly the same; and here we might leave it. But there are those who attribute a different meaning to the apostle’s words: “Eutychus pays the penalty of his inattention; but God bears testimony to His own goodness, and to the power with which he had endued the apostle, by raising him from a state of death. Paul says that his soul was yet (?) in him: he had only to renew the connection between it and his physical organization. In other cases the soul had been recalled.” Another says, “Assuredly the apostle in these words had no desire to make light of the power of God which had wrought in this miracle. It may be well to compare with this Luke 8:49-56, where the spirit of the Jewish maiden had departed. But the Lord’s words were enough; and ‘her spirit returned.’ Here it was not so: ‘his soul is in him,’ says the apostle, though divine power alone could retain it, or hinder the proximate break-up.” If this be really what is meant, we have a death which, as far as man is concerned, is truly that, -the one in it outside of all human help, or even accessibility to any mode of appeal that can be made. Is it not possible also for a true child of God to get into a condition resembling this? as far as man is concerned inaccessible; the truth itself known in such sort that it has power no longer? nothing remaining capable of penetrating the hardened conscience, or of rousing any longer the insensible heart? How terrible may be the effect upon men in this way of truth heard, it may be, long, but not yielded to, or no longer so, but met with a resistance continued until it has stiffened into indifference? the speaker becoming perhaps “as a very lovely song of one that has a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument” (Ezekiel 33:32), or soothing the hearer in his dangerous sleep! Some lesson such as that which has been indicated, the story of Eutychus must surely yield. We are here amid intimations of the present time, when the Church, bereft of her first human guardians, would have to work out her own salvation in a world opposed to Christ; and in which, as we shall shortly have plainly declared, the enemy would have in the meantime only too much success both in alluring and worrying the sheep of Christ. The Spirit indeed would not depart; and in the faithfulness and love of God there would always be refuge and unfailing blessing, for His own. But the source of worse danger they carry ever with them, an evil heart of unbelief ready to turn them aside to seek other help than in the Only and All-powerful Helper. Thus declension and revival have marked the Church’s history upon earth; the mercy of God raising up deliverers in those who sought fully to follow in the path of faith, while the mass dragging behind would limit and enfeeble the deliverance. In Paul here we may see the special power of one who wrought with God to revive the dead, and relieve for a time the distress; but the vessels of this power depart, and those who have rejoiced in it but had it not are left once more to face their own responsibility with their feebleness to meet it. The apostle in the consciousness of such a condition of things ensuing, himself sustained* by the refreshment of that which is the means of communion to the whole company, spends the whole night in converse with them till the day breaks, and at the day-dawn departs.
4. To Assos, where his companions proceed on shipboard, Paul goes alone on foot! It is probable enough that at this moment solitude was more congenial to him than companionship, even with those so spiritually akin as were his companions at this time. The future of that Church, so dear to him as the Church of Christ, was, as we know by what follows, upon his heart. He was the man of all on earth upon whom this burden rested (2 Corinthians 11:28-29). None knew as well, perhaps, as he, upon Whose shoulders of strength the graven names are; yet that did not hinder the employment of his heart with those for whom the heart of Christ was employed, but gave depth to it.

There were personal causes of thought also, although not separate from the Church’s need, in whose service his life was spent. He was going to Jerusalem; place of so many memories, and perhaps of his most real conflict. What waited him there? what lay beyond this? would it affect his after-course? would it alter those visions of future service which did not stop short of the furthest bounds of the west? Doubtless he had occupation enough with thoughts that thronged him those twenty-five miles or so to Assos. There they took him up, and thence they sailed, passing by Ephesus, which with all his ties to it would detain him too long if he visited it now, and only briefly pausing at Miletus. But Ephesus could not be left aside with no token of his ever-abiding love; and the stay at Miletus gives him his desired opportunity. It was but thirty miles away, and a good road connecting; “he sent and called to him the elders of the assembly,” for his last tender greeting. The address of the apostle to the elders here is clearly in accordance with what has been already said of the representative character of the assembly at Ephesus. We have nothing like it elsewhere; and it ends in fact Paul’s ministry of active labor as far as the only inspired account given us depicts it. From Jerusalem a new kind of testimony begins, and if he were freed from his chain at Rome, and permitted to carry out his thought of going on to Spain, yet nothing of this comes into or is needed for the completion of the history, -for the divine purpose with which it has been given us. A divine history is no mere account of things in detail; it is much more than this: it is a specially arranged extract from the whole, to prevent our losing ourselves in the many details, and to guide us to a proper estimate of the whole; it is at once a history and a comment which the history itself furnishes. According to the divine thought, then, the evangelization of the Gentiles is here complete: we stand at the end and look back upon it; and with the review can look on also to see the result of it all, as thus complete. Moreover, in the review of the work of such an one as Paul we get a clearer apprehension spiritually of these results than if we had a wider field and many workmen. Then we should have a complicated problem to work out -to estimate the laborers and their labors separately and together, and to distinguish what might be due to each. Now on the other hand, we have one pattern workman, and we can certainly anticipate no better results from any other, nor from any number of others; we have the whole matter resolved for us with the greatest simplicity that can be. An unalterably solemn thing it is, to look at it so; and a comparison made outside the history of the Acts will only confirm it. Where was there a place more competent as an example than the great assembly at Corinth, “coming behind in no gift;” the fruit of the apostle’s careful labors for a year and a half; in how short a time does the first epistle, written from Ephesus during his work there, show us results such as we need not be reminded of; the Spirit of God, by the hand of Paul himself, has given it in detail. Look at Galatia with its zeal and enthusiasm for him who had brought it the gospel of Christ; in still less time from that of his second visit swept by the chilling blasts of legality, and giving up the joyous Spirit of adoption for the spirit of bondage. Compared with these Paul’s declaration as to Ephesus is moderate indeed. At the outset he reminds them of the character of his life and service among them, so well known during the long time he had spent there. His service now ended, he can speak of it with frankness and simplicity of heart to those who would need to serve with the same lowliness, compassed with the same perils. In his ministry there had been no reserve -no keeping back of anything that would be profitable, in a service which was not only public and general, at individual and from house to house. The basis of all was that which went out in testimony to Jews and Greeks, -repentance towards God, that judgment of self in His Presence which sets aside self-righteousness and self-confidence of every kind, and thus also that seeking after one’s own will and way which is the essence of sin; on the other hand, faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ, which alone gives God to be known and joyed in. and thus links the soul to Him from whom it can no more be sundered. These two things, it is evident, are but different parts of the one great whole of conversion, and which cannot exist apart from one another. One cannot exist, therefore, before the other, and they exercise a reciprocal influence upon each other.

True repentance is as evangelical as true faith; and true faith as practical as true repentance. And the relation of each to a man’s works is strangely in contrast with the usual thoughts; for while faith it is that is the worker, insomuch that “faith, if it have not works, is dead” faith merely, repentance it is that turns from all doings of man as wherein to have confidence, abhorring self, not sin merely, as the best man on earth was taught to do (Job 42:6). But thus the two clasp hands and walk together. On such a basis, then, has his work been: but he is now leaving it; as far as they are concerned, it is for ever, -they will see his face no more. For himself, he is going to Jerusalem, bound in spirit -surely not the Holy Spirit, to whom the term he uses would be quite inapplicable, nor does it speak of the sweet and happy constraint of love, though love is in it -deep and constraining love; but along with this is certainly a foreboding which casts a shadow over him; the word “bound” reminds one of the victim for the altar; yet, if it were only that, and he felt the Lord were leading him in this way, his spirit would be brighter: his spirit would not bind him, though men’s hands might. Contrast his words to the Philippians, where he is contemplating such a possibility: “Yea, and if I be offered” -“poured out” rather, the figure being taken from the drink-offering, which was a symbol of joy; and thus he goes on, -“and if I be poured out upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy and rejoice with you all” (Philippians 2:17). Again, when in nearer view of the end: -“For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand; I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me in that day” (2 Timothy 4:6-8). The mere circumstances, therefore, will not explain the expression used by him now without a great wrong to the apostle himself; except indeed we take in the circumstances in a wider sense, beginning with his love to Israel; deep enough to have made him, as he declares to the Romans (and when this journey was in fact before him), be wishing that he himself were anathema from Christ for his brethren, his kinsmen according to the flesh (Romans 9:3); yet with those words in his ears, -how they must have remained in his ears! -They will not receive thy testimony concerning Me," how the longing desire of the heart may work round the plainest testimonies! and especially even when the love that creates it is one like this of the apostle, a divine love for the people of God; for a people whose history was the history of God’s grace to men from times far off, and of whom the Lord Himself had said, “Salvation is of the Jews.” Here he was, then, with his offering from the Gentiles, hoping, as it would seem, that now at last he might find that restriction removed, and that He who had once sent him far off to the Gentiles, might now permit him a testimony that should be accepted at Jerusalem itself. And yet -and yet -an uncertainty seems to cling to it in his mind, and shadow the hope that would fain be confident. He knows not what is to befall him there. There was the general witness of the Spirit -no exceptional thing that -wherever clustered the abodes of men, there were the scenes of his trial, if of his triumphs, -bonds and afflictions awaited him. What wonder if they did so at Jerusalem? Would he shrink from it on that account? Did he value his life, in the accomplishment of his course, -of that ministry received from the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God? In Ephesus, however, his work was done; with the whole counsel of God fully declared to them, he was clear from the blood of all. He addresses himself, therefore, to those to whom the Spirit had given a place of oversight in the assembly, to care for it and watch and warn as he had done, tending the flock as shepherds, in view of evils which he can already foresee, and which would require their utmost vigilance and care. As others have said, it is plain that the apostle thinks of no successors to himself in apostolic power or place. It is the elders who are now to exercise oversight, and they are not apostles. We find by the Apocalyptic epistle to Ephesus, that in fact just to that which, as has been already said, in a special way represents the Church at large there did come those who professed to be such successors: men who claimed to be apostles and were not, and whom they found liars (Revelation 2:2). The Corinthians also are warned of false apostles (2 Corinthians 11:13), but nowhere are any exhorted to receive the true. This is marked and decisive as to those who make such claims today. It is remarkable indeed how ritualism has stultified itself in its successional pretensions, which always cleave to Peter, never to Paul: to the man, that is, who distinctly gave up the Gentiles to the care of Paul, himself going to the circumcision (Galatians 2:9).

Who pretends, in fact, to be successor to Paul, who had the whole Gentile field committed to him? Or when did Paul confine himself to so narrow a field as that which the widest imaginable episcopal diocese would be to such an one (Romans 1:13-15)?

But in fact the episcopi -the bishops -are here in these elders (ver. 28, R.V.), who were simply the overseers of an assembly, -no one of them with diocese or parish or assembly of his own. We have seen such appointed in the Gentile assemblies by Paul and Barnabas on their first return journey through Lycaonia and Pisidia (Acts 14:23), and here we find them again in Ephesus. They are a company in each assembly of men fitted by their years, or that practical experience that should come through years, to take fatherly rule and oversight together. In this way they were to tend the flock as shepherds, but it by no means follows that this comprehends also the “nourishing and furnishing it with the wholesome food of the Word and all the means of grace,” as Lechler alleges; here is not the place properly to discuss this; it is quite natural for those to think so who have been accustomed to see in the minister of the church the union of all the public “gifts” in the body of Christ. On the other hand it may be asserted without hesitation that the minister of a church, as almost everywhere found today, does not anywhere appear in the pages of the New Testament. The elders were a local board, as is plain; and by the very fact that they were “elders,” though the word seems to have lost its meaning now, they could not include all ministry in the assembly; which the well-known text in the first epistle to Timothy (1 Timothy 5:17) confirms: elders might rule well, and yet not labor in the Word and doctrine; the one did not at all include the other. Appointed by the apostle, as in the case before us compared with those already mentioned we cannot doubt they were, it could be said that the Holy Spirit had made them overseers, and in the assembly of God which He had purchased with the blood of His own -of One in such endeared relation as Christ was. How great the responsibility, then, of such a charge! The more, because evil times were coming, and not far off, as “after my departure” would surely indicate. The conflict with evil in a world like this cannot be avoided; and God turns it to blessing, but does not keep His people from it. Have we not to maintain a similar struggle with an inward enemy also? And so as to the Church of God, it would not be persecution from the world that would be the only, or even the chief trial.

Here too there would be internal strife: “I know,” says the apostle, “that after my departure there will come in among you grievous wolves, not sparing the flock; also from among your own selves shall men rise up, speaking things perverted, to draw away the disciples after them.” On the one hand, from without the evil would break in through the slackly-guarded gates: we see the possibility of this in Simon at Samaria; though there the power did not lack to detect and cast out what had gained admission. On the other hand, from within perversions of truth would come, men seeking to make of themselves a centre instead of Christ: the subtlest evil, -truth with a twist in it, so as in some sense to deceive the true. For, alas, how seldom are we absolutely and altogether such that error cannot appeal to us! Doubtless “he that will do His will shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God;” but who then can look round among the contradictory views that divide the sincerest Christians, without realizing how much our own wills must deceive us after all? How solemn does this make the apostle’s word to Timothy, “Take heed to thyself and to the doctrine” (1 Timothy 4:16); to thyself first! For Scripture itself will only furnish perfectly the man of God: and we may be earnest enough to learn just such and such things, and find no capacity, because of something we do not want to learn, which must be learned first! For this cause what we may be pleased to call our open Bible may be a Bible with few wide open pages. If we shut our eyes, we cannot dictate to them just what they shall shut out! But if anything like this be true, then we must not wonder at the decline that seems ever ready to set in after the greatest of revivals. All truth makes demand proportionate to its blessedness, and thus the highest truth may be the first to be lost. It is a solemn thing indeed that, even amongst Christians, the doctrine of Paul is that least received, most carped at. How significant were the tears with which day and night he ceased not to admonish every one! Therefore they were to watch; God and the word of His grace remained with them, and would remain: a sufficient resource surely, whatever the trial. It was able to build them up and give them an inheritance among the sanctified; it is able still to minister now to the soul a portion as large as ever. We have no limit except that which we make for ourselves; why make it? Sustained by all this wealth of blessing, he could appeal to them that he had coveted nothing from them. His own hands had sufficed for his need, and even for that of others with him. He had given them an example of labor freely engaged in on behalf of the weak, and a fulfilment of the words of the Lord Jesus, that it is more blessed to give than to receive. He closes with a full heart, pouring out his prayers with them before he leaves them, with a burst of sorrowing love on their part at the close of a ministry to which they owed their all, henceforth a memory only, save in that one letter from the Roman prison in which he takes them and us up into the land where are no partings, and where the inheritance of them that are sanctified is spread before us and made our own. He had been already caught up there, to see things he could not communicate. In his captivity at Rome even he seems to have acquired a more penetrating apprehension of the things unseen, which he is able at the same time to communicate. May we have ability to receive these revelations which alone place us in the full height of our position as Christians, and thus give us the full length and breadth of what is through grace our own!