LTHOUGH it had been plainly intimated to Peter

that he was to seal the testimony of Jesus with his

blood, and thereby to glorify God, his time of departure had not come yet: much intermediate labour, and suffering, and usefulness, were appointed to this eminent apostle. Accordingly, the intentions of Herod on his life were frustrated on this occasion in a very signal manner. 'Peter therefore was kept in prison; but prayer was made without ceasing to God for him. And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains. And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands. And he went out and followed him [the angel]; and wist not that it was true; but thought he saw a vision.'-ACTS xii.

HEROD DESTROYED BY AN ANGEL.

(HIS tyrant was greatly enraged when he found that

TH

his prisoner had escaped him, and, yet thirsting

for blood, commanded that the jailors should be put to death. After his disappointment, he departed from Jerusalem, and came and dwelt at Cesarea, till, in the midst of his pride, his glory, and his crimes, the judgment of God overtook him, and avenged the death of James and the designed murder of Peter in a most awful manner. He was preparing to make war on the Tyrians and Sidonians, on some frivolous pretext; but these people sent ambassadors to him to sue for peace, which, on a set day, they did, with such monstrous adulation, that they declared the speech of Herod was the voice of a god, and not of a man. 'And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory; and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the

ghost.' Herod had been too long amongst the Jews not to have learned from their religion some notions of the true God, and of His jealousy on the ascription of divine honours to others. His guilt, therefore, in accepting of this impious worship, became the greater.-ACTS xii.

SAUL

AUL, now called Paul, continued to make full proof of his ministry and apostleship, and to do the work

of an evangelist; content to spend and be spent, to labour, preach, and suffer, in the great undertaking to which now his life was devoted. 'And it came to pass in Iconium, that they [Paul and Barnabas] went both together into the synagogue of the Jews, and so spake, that a great multitude both of the Jews and also of the Greeks believed. And when there was an assault made to use them despitefully, and to stone them, they were

PAUL HEALS A CRIPPLE.

325

aware of it, and fled unto Lystra and Derbe, and there they preached the gospel. And there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother's womb, who never had walked: the same heard Paul speak; who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed, said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And he leaped and walked. And when the people saw it, they lifted up their voices, saying, The gods are come down in the likeness of men and would have done sacrifice; which when the apostles heard, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, saying, Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God.'-ACTS xiv.

O fickle is human nature, and such were the vicissitudes of the apostles' lives, that they, who but now were accounted as gods, and no less deities than Jupiter and Mercury, were presently assailed with stones to the danger of their lives. 'And there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium, who persuaded the people; and, having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city and the next day he departed with Barnabas to Derbe.' This outrageous treatment was alluded to by Paul, in the eleventh chapter of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 'Once was I stoned:' again, in the third chapter of the Second Epistle to Timothy, 'Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra.'-ACTS xiv.