Vere. 16-23.-A unique prisoner. With the masterliness of inspired history, exceeding brevity itself in the passage before us seems to reveal rather than conceal. A few powerful strokes of the pen portray and very strikingly a hero, and one at the same time as real and unusual as ever lived. Great, indeed, must have been the length and the fulness of detail given, if the method of detail had been the one chosen, in order to attain the result of leaving with us an equally correct and complete appre- hension of the position of Paul now, the manner of man he was, and the scope of Divine providence. The intense interest for Paul of reaching Rome is lost, lost indeed without a moment's mention of it on the part of the history, in the intenser interest that gathered round, and which he helped to make gather round, the object of his coming there. Of the one the history says nothing, but it says all of the other. And no sooner are we told the bare fact that Paul had reached Rome, than these following facts find prominent mention. We are told- I. THAT THE PRISONER IS NOT PUT INTO THE PRISON. 1. No one there wanted to put him in. He had found favour too certainly already. 2. There was no need to put him in. His word could be trusted, and " one soldier" was considered enough to save appearances. 3. Prisons and "jailors" and authorities had already had too much of having him and others of the same sort in prison (eh. v. 19; xii. 8; xvi. 26), in J udma; and perhaps, for the present at all events, the Romans and even the Jews in Rome were wiser for their own interest. II. THAT FOB THE ACCUSED THERE ABE FOUND NO ACCUSERS AT A.LL. III. THAT THE HAN WHO IS TO DE TBIED IS DRIVEN TO ENDE.!.VOUB TO FIND ANOTHER BOBT OF JURY, AND ONE OF THE MORE UNXEBOIFUL x;nm, FOB HIMSELF. IV. THAT THE BAME MAN IS NOT ONLY SPEEDILY RELIEVED FROM ANY IMPUT.!.TI0N OF FAULT, BUT IS COURTEOUSLY ASKED FOB ms GOSPEL, BY THIS LARGE AND INFLU- ENTIAL JURY. "A great door e.nd effectual" was now at once opened for the apostle., His Lord's promises and his own heart's deepest wishes begin to be fulfilled (eh. =iii. 11). With abounding zeal Paul uses his opportunity; he draws from all "the Scriptures;" he testifies "from morning till evening;" he interests his hearers, is the meani of the conversion of some, and the awakener of much inquiry and" great reasonings" among others. Nor withholds the faithful and searching rebuke. It is again "the whole 1ounsel of God " which he does not shun to declare.-B.
Ver. 24.-The leading results following upon preaching. As Jesus went before 118 all, in our sorrows, difficulties, and holiest joys, so, even if in less degree, his first apostles went before us in very many experiences of the first preaching of the gospel with which we are now perfectly well acquainted, The successes and the bitter disap- pointments of the Christian preacher are at this very time keenly felt by Paul, and other of the solemn phenomena lie open before him, and observed by him evidently with very pained observation, were treated by him in a wa.y full of instruction for our- selves. The short but speaking comment of this verse, on Paul's first preaching of the gospel of Christ in Rome, though no doubt on this occasion almost exclusi\"oly to his THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [on. XXVITI. 1-31.
own people the JeWB, iB exceedingly worthy of our notioe. We may notice these typical l'ff~cts of the ~ospel of Christ faithfully preached, I. }T isXCITEB THE STIR OF LIFE, II. IT EXCITES A PECULIAR KIND OF STIR OF LIFE. It iB not the lifo of mind aloni,, It is not like the interest that gathers quickly round the finest discoveries and investi- gatings of science. It has another unmistakable element, and one thnt refuses to be at all ignored, a certain moral element. Very quickly does it beg to be informed whether men "believe" or do "not believe." And it states that on this everything turns. lIL IT EXHIBITS INVARIABLY (?) AMID GREAT VARIETIES IN OTHER RESPECTS ONE U1"'1FOBlll PHENOMENON-SOME TAKE IT, OTHERS REFUSE IT. It is then that the Christian preacher, and the Christian man whoever he is, stands in the presence of the grandest, deepest, most inscrutable mystery beneath the sun-this, that the gospel of God's love in Christ presumably to be eagerly and intelligently seized by every man, sooner than the bread on which he feeds, is taken by some, is rejected by others. •• Some believed •.. a.nd some believed not I "-B.