1. His sufferings —
[St. Paul, at his conversion, had been told by the Saviour *' what great things he should suffer for his Master's sake :" and truly they were great, greater far than those which fell to the share of any other Apostle. He was " in stripes above measure," being five times scourged by the Jews to the utmost extremity that their law allowed ; and thrice by the Romans, though in direct opposition to the Roman law. " In prisons" all the Apostles had been ; but not so frequently as he. So " often was he in deaths," that he felt himself " standing in jeopardy every hour," and could appeal to God that " he died daily ^" Thrice did he suffer shipwreck : and on one of those occasions he floated on a piece of the wreck " a day and a night," every moment in danger of being consigned to a watery grave. On one occasion he was stoned (at Lystra), and actu- ally left for dead : and doubtless he would have died, if God had not, by a miraculous power, raised him up again, and restored hiin to the use of his limbs ''.
What patience, what resignation, what fortitude, must the Apostle have j^ossessed, when he could persevere in the midst of such continued and severe trials as these ! And how strange does it appear, that " in every place such bonds and such afflictions should await " such a man as he ; whose only fault was, that he loved his God and Saviour, and loved his fellow- creatures too even beyond his own life! But so it was; and so it will be, as long as ungodly men shall have it in their power to put forth into exercise their enmity against God : and, in proportion as any man resembles Paul in his zeal for Christ, and in his love to men, he will meet with the very same treatment that the Apostle did : and if he be not persecuted
a 1 Cor. XV. 30, 31.
^ All these were prior to his sufferings recorded in the latter part of the Acts of the Apostles.