The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 2 — Section 49

be) is i:efueed by the Spirit of truth and by the true themselves, who will not encourage the eV1l that ~oorl may come; on the other hrmd, how their designed injury ie b~tilked; but finRlly how, from all the humbling mournCul scene a victory "in the !'Rrne of the Lord Jes~" was won by Paul. Whatever it was tha.t' was most offensive rn what had been takmg place was summarily ended, huma.n powers were disen- thralled, a whole market of human iniquity was soon closed, if not bankrupt, and the true power was exalted and magnified. II. THE OPPOSITION ITSELF, A1'"D VICTORY TIIE SECOND. 1. The opposition we.e not on aecoun~ of the religious views or preaching and teaching of Paul and Sila.s. '!'hey W<'re Gentiles and Romans who were the opponents now, not, as so often hitherto, Jews. The cause of the opposition was most radical to the human heart. 'l'he miserable slave h~ been gRin to cruel masters, never so cruel as when cruel to hum:mity, and ns her i;:irnfulnci-s waa gone their opposition was come, and was decided and determined and bitter, and withal disingenuous. They pleaded they wero Romans, and they forgot to make sure that there was not a sense in which Paul and Siln.s were Romans to whom it was yet more necessary to show respect. But the cause was stated to consist in what l'aul tau;:ht as a" Jew." 2. The opposition was conducted in every sort of disregard of justice and order. Angry people and rulers, and magistrates l\nd multitude, are mingled together a;:rainst a couple of men who had brought a possessed slave to her right mind; and str1pcs and imprisonment, and innermost prison and stocks, a.re their punishment, and, it is supposed, the silencing of them. 3. The opposition, instead of silencing them, had taken the means to keep them awake even at midnight, when perhaps every one of their enemies slept. What can they do but pray? But prayer sometimes brings very ready, very present help, and they sang praises, and though the jailor beard them not, other suJforiug prisoners did. And God above heard, and brought speedy and foll deliverance. No stone of the prison building but it moved, no locked door but it opened, no fetter bnt it was loosed. And immediately the second great victory began to be apparent. (1) The cause of Paul and Silas is one for which miracle and earthquake and Heaven will appear. (2) The jailer's life is saved by prisoners forsooth-those "·hom be had fastened so securely and so hastily a few hours before. (3) A greater, better life is roused in that jailor, so that his bands to wash the stripes, and his house and his meat and his very heart, are all at the feet of his prisoners, and " he and all his" numbered among the followers of Christ I Wonders like these passed all Philippi had ever dreamed of before. lIL THE ENTBE COLLAPSE OF TBE OPPOSITION, AND VICTORY TBE THIRD, 1. When God's judgments a.re abroad in the earth, the very air is rife of their rumour. The magis- trates, before ever day dawned, had beard, if it were only e. whisper, what moved them more than the earthquake. They send simplest order that the men be "let go." It is not only humble hearts moved to salvation, that own to the interposition of Paul's God and Saviour; hearts proud, unchanged, and haply unchangeable quake to their centre, and will try the shortest way and the least-observed way or any way, if they may feel free again to breathe., and free from what is to them the most dread incubus. 2. But the hour of the supreme triumph of the servants of Christ bad arrived. They show no hurry t.o go. They have been silent when the market-place howled around them. But when an almost deathly stillness prevailed that daydawn, and those who were about spoke with hushed and bated breath, a very few, very quiet, but very authoritative words of Paul's lips finally c.omplete the transformation of the scene. What a contrast, and what a proud hour for truth, when Paul pronounces on certain ma~,istra.tes a sentence of m~re moral grandeur and far-reaohingness, than all the 110ntences they for centuries have pro..tounced I You can hear those words, and the climax of them, "Nay verily I" Certainly all the rest "went indeed by saying." Nor cnn we doubt that to God Paul and Silas gave the glory; t.o Jesus, Master, King, Captain, they gave the glory; to the energetic Spirit of light and power and conversion, they gave the glory; nor took one atom of the proud satisfaction to themselves when the "magistrates came" in person, "and besough~" the~ and brought the~ out1 !in~ debired them to depart o_ut of the city." What triple triumph Jesus won 1n Ph1hpp1 of E~~ope, when he d!s- enthralled the body and the mind of the slave, when he made the Ja1lor's heart and life all his own, and when he 110nt the magistrates on their ~ees to the scourged, imfrisoned, but now dictating Paul a.ild Sil~ I-a. 011. XVI. 1-40.] TUE ACTS OF TIIE APOSTLES. 51