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was, no doubt, of eminent service to them; for the church recovered its purity afterwards, and in the year 96, which was twenty-eight years after the departure of Paul, the apostle John wrote that letter to Ephesus which is recorded Rev. ii., and in which, with some complaints of having left their first love, the Lord Jesus nevertheless praises the purity of the church.

Having taken a most affectionate leave of his friends at Miletus, the apostle began to shape his course for Jerusalem, being desirous, if possible, to be there at the approaching feast of Pentecost. Accordingly, after touching at different places, he landed at Tyre, where, finding disciples, he abode with them seven days; in all probability that he might spend the first day of the week with them, and have his spirit refreshed with the ordinances of the Gospel. Thence he came to Cæsarea, where he continued several days, at the house of Philip, the evangelist. Both at Tyre and Cæsarea, the apostle received supernatural intimations of what was to befal him at Jerusalem, and his friends would fain have dissuaded him from going thither; but, though sensibly affected by the expressions of their love, all entreaty to change his purpose was vain. "What mean ye to weep and break my heart," said he; " for I am ready not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus," Acts xxi. 13.

From Cæsarea to Jerusalem the apostle was accompanied by several of his friends, and arriving at the latter city he was very kindly received by the apostle James, the Elders of the church, and brethren in general; to whom he rehearsed, in order, all the interesting things that God had wrought among the Gentiles by his ministry, which excited their unfeigned gratitude to God, to whom they gave the glory, ver. 16-20.

It ought to be mentioned, in this place, that one reason which the apostle had for going up to Jerusalem, at this time, was to present to the church in that city the amount of a collection which had been made among the Gentile churches, for the relief of their poor brethren in Judæa, who were reduced to great straits and difficulties, in consequence of a famine which had prevailed throughout the country. There are frequent allusions to this, both in the Acts and apostolic epistles; * and it was evi*Acts. xxiv. 17; Rom. xv. 25-28; 1 Cor. xvi. 1-3; 2 Cor. viii. and ix;

Gal. ii. 10.

dently a matter in which the great apostle of the Gentiles took a very lively interest.

There were, however, some circumstances in the existing state of things, which rendered the apostle's visit to Jerusalem at that moment a matter of considerable delicacy and danger; and, as this is a point which does not seem to be well understood by many in the present day, it may be useful to offer a brief explanation.

There were two classes of his own countrymen then in Jerusalem, whose prejudices the apostle had to encounter on this occasion. The first consisted of believing Jews-members of the Church in Jerusalem, and with them the case stood thus :They believed Jesus Christ to be the Messiah, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world; and believing this they were justified and adopted into the family of God. But the greater part of these persons did not perceive that Christ, by his death, had abrogated the old Covenant, and freed his disciples, even among the Jews, from all obligation to keep the law of Moses. They had been trained up in a reverence for that divine institution, and, though they believed in Christ who was the end of it, their consciences were still bound by its authority, nor could they bear to hear of any persons forsaking Moses. Paul, indeed, and a few others, clearly saw their liberty in this matter, and either observed the Jewish ritual or neglected it, as prudence dictated, and this is what the apostle refers to in 1 Cor. ix. 19-23. This state of affairs continued from the resurrection of Christ until Paul wrote the epistle to the Hebrews, during which there was no express written revelation freeing the minds of the Jewish converts from an obligation to keep the law; consequently they retained all their zeal for it. And this furnishes us with a key to what took place while the apostle was up at Jerusalem on this occasion. We are told that James and the elders of the church thus addressed him: "Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of the Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous of the law; and they are informed of thee that thou teachest all the Jews that are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs. What is to be done in this matter? The multitude must needs come together, for they

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will hear that thou art come. Conform thou on the present occasion, and give them proof that thou thyself walkest orderly and keepest the law." The apostle complied and went into the Temple to perform a vow, and thus he met the prejudices of his believing brethren. But the consequence was only to subject him to the rage and malice of the unbelieving Jews, who, seeing him in the temple, recognized him as the man who taught the people every where to forsake the Temple and its worship.-The whole city was consequently moved, and the people ran together and seized Paul with an intention to put him to death, which they would speedily have effected, had he not been rescued by a band of soldiers. Acts ch. xxi.

When the uproar had subsided, the apostle obtained leave from the chief captain to address the multitude, in which, after rehearsing some particulars of his personal history, he narrates the circumstances of his conversion, and the commission which he had received from Christ to publish his Gospel among the Gentiles;-but no sooner had he mentioned this than the unbelieving Jews lost all patience with him: "they gave him audience" until he mentioned the word "Gentiles," and then they lifted up their voices and said, "Away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live." They now proceeded to wreak their vengeance on the apostle-they "cast off their clothes and threw dust into the air;" but the chief сарtain, aware of their murderous intentions, had the apostle conveyed into the castle, where he gave orders to examine him by scourging; but finding that he was a citizen of Rome, free-born, he abandoned the idea of scourging altogether, as a thing which the Roman law did not allow to any of its free citizens, and on the following day had him brought before the chief priests and council, to be by them examined.

The interesting events of the apostle's life, from this time to the period of his arrival as a prisoner at Rome, are detailed by the evangelist Luke, in the Acts of the Apostles, from the twenty-second to the twenty-eighth chapter, inclusive, so that it is only necessary to direct the reader's attention to them. The narrative is so compressed and so affectingly related as to be incapable of abridgment, without doing manifest injustice to it, at the same time that it renders all comment unnecessary. On

his arrival in the metropolis, the apostle being permitted to reside alone, accompanied by a soldier who guarded him, he convened a meeting of the leading men among the Jews, to whom he explained the circumstances of his imprisonment, and the reasons of his appealing unto Cæsar. As they seemed disposed to hear what Paul had to say in defence of his faith in Christ, he appointed a day on which many came to his lodgings, to whom he discoursed from morning to evening; and the result was that " some believed the things that were spoken and some believed not." In this way Paul spent two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came unto him, preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him, Acts ch. xxviii.

And here the account of the apostle's labours and travels as contained in the Acts of the Apostles terminates. He appears to have been released in the spring of the year 62, when he embarked with Titus, and probably Timothy also, at some of the ports of Italy, intending to visit the churches of Judæa, according to his promise, Heb. xiii. 23. But in the course of his voyage, happening to touch at Crete, he preached in many cities there, and either gathered new churches or increased those already gathered, Titus, i. 1. Having arrived in Judæa, the apostle visited the church of Jerusalem, and the other churches in that country, to which he had lately sent an epistle from Rome, inscribed to the Hebrews.

Accompanied by Timothy, Paul travelled through Syria and Cilicia, taking Antioch in his way, where he had so often and so successfully ministered in the Gospel. Thence he proceeded to Galatia, and after that to Colosse, where he desired Philemon to provide him a lodging (ver. 22), intending to spend some time in that city. Having finished his business at Colosse, he went to Ephesus, in his way to Macedonia, where he visited the several churches, and, among the rest, that at Philippi, from which he had received great kindness and to which he was much attached.

About this time the emperor Nero began that persecution of the Christians which is reckoned the first of the ten general persecutions. He set fire to the city of Rome, July 10, A. D.

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64, laying a great part of it in ashes, and, to clear himself from the imputation of so odious a crime, in November following he began to punish the Christians as the incendiaries. Paul was at the moment in Crete; but, thinking his presence might be useful in comforting his brethren, he hastened with Titus into Italy, where he arrived in the beginning of the year 65, and was soon after apprehended and imprisoned in order to be punished. How long he continued in prison at this time we know not; but from his being twice brought before the emperor, or his prefect, it may be presumed that he was imprisoned a year or more before he was condemned. At his first examination, all his associates forsook him and fled, 2 Tim. iv. 11, 16. He however escaped for a time out of the mouth of the lion; but, according to early Christian writers, he was condemned and put to death, in the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, answering to A D. 66; and two years after, viz. A. D. 68, Nero put an end to his own life and to this terrible persecution, which had lasted four years, and swept off a prodigious number of the disciples of Christ.

In concluding the present Lecture, it may be useful to take a review of the principal points touched upon, both in this and the foregoing Lecture-the difficulties which Christianity had to encounter among Jews and Gentiles-the total inadequacy of the instruments employed in propagating it to give it effect-the wonderful success, nevertheless, with which it was crowned, and the evidence which we therefore deduce from the whole in favour of its heavenly origin. The argument may be thus concisely stated:-The Gospel, when first published to the world, had difficulties to surmount of the most formidable description, both among Jews and Gentiles, arising from the unpopularity of its tenets and the obscurity and fate of its founder. The human and natural means employed for the propagation of it were so inadequate that they must, without the divine interposition, have proved utterly unavailable in answering the purpose: the purpose, nevertheless, was answered; consequently they must have been accompanied by the divine interposition, and, if so, Christianity is not of man but of God.

1. As to the difficulties which it had to encounter, we have seen how inveterate were the prejudices of the Jews against a