Life of St. Paul for the Young. XXII–XXIII

LIFE OF ST. PAUL FOR THE YOUNG. BY GEORGE LUDINGTON WEED. CHAPTER XXII. PHILIPPI. Riverside Prayer-meeting—Lydia—A Slave Girl with an Evil Spirit—Cast Out by Paul —Arrest of Paul and Silas—Beaten—Imprisonment—Songs in the Night— Earthquake—The Philippian Jailer—Alarmed Magistrates—Paul a Roman Citizen—The Great Question and its Only Answer. Paul visited Philippi about twenty years after the death and resurrection of Christ. Though there was no Christianity in Europe, there were some who worshiped God in sincerity, and were ready to receive the Gospel of Christ when offered to them. Paul found such in Philippi. No synagogue was there, but a place of worship, probably a rude enclosure open at the top, on the bank of the river Gaggitas. The worshipers were women only, believers in the God of the Jews, but knowing little or nothing about Jesus Christ. They met Sabbath after Sabbath for prayer. On one of these days Paul and Silas came and *'sat down and spake unto" them. One of these women was named Lydia. Her home was in the city of Thyatira. She was a seller of purple—a beautiful dye with which the richest garments were colored. In her business, she spent part of her time in Philippi. Her "heart the Lord opened that she attended unto the things which were spoken by Paul." She not only carefully listened to his words, but believed what he said, becoming the first Christian in Philippi, and being baptized with her household. In gratitude and friendship for him and his companion, she invited them to be her guests while in the Copyright, 1899, by George W. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia.

LIFE OF ST. PAUL FOR THE YOUNG. 535 'city. This was only the beginning of kindness he received from Philippian Christians. Four times they made him gifts when in need; one of them when he was a prisoner in a Roman dungeon. For many days Paul continued to teach and preach without any such trouble as he had in other places. There was a certain young woman who did and said strange things, in which ignwant people believed she was helped by a heathen god called Apollo. She made wild gestures and pretended to be a prophet telling of things that would happen. She had a mysterious evil spirit. She was a slave whose owners received money for her foolish and deceitful doings. Paul and Silas continued to go to the riverside to meet the increasing numbers who wanted to see and hear them. The poor slave girl followed ohem again and again. She seems to have understood something about the apostles and their teaching. Day after day she cried out, ' 'These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation." This was true, but Paul feared that coming from her it would do no good. He also w^anted to show that the Christian religion had more power than that which her masters pretended that she had. So Paul said to the evil spirit in her, "I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.'' ' 'i.nd he came out the same hour." Her masters were very angry because they could no more use her in getting money. So in revenge they complained that Paul and Silas were making trouble by preaching a new kind of religion. The apostles were not allowed to make any defense, nor to have any trial in which their innocence could be proved. The magistrates did as the slave's masters and the ignorant, excited mob demanded, giving order for the arrest of Paul and Silas. They were seized, rudely stripped of their garments, dragged to the whippingpost with their hands tied, and beaten with rods of elm-wood on their naked backs. Eight times do we find such shame and cruelty in the story ~of the life of Paul. . ''And when they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely." He probably thought they were guilty of some great crime,'and that the officers wished them to be very cruelly treated. So he rudely

536 IMPROVEMENT ERA. "thrust them into the inner prison"—the dark and loathsome dungeon where not even the light of day could give a little cheer and comfort. It was probably one of those horrid cells well known throughout the Roman world, where the inmates suifered from cold and dampness which made their chains to rust, while they endured a living death. Adding to their torture, "he made their feet fast in the stocks." This was a wooden instrument of torture having five holes—two for the wrists, two for the ankles, and one for the neck. The only pity the jailer seems to have shown was in using only those for the feet. The apostles had no hope of favor on the morrow from the unjust and merciless officers of the law, sleeping in their homes without thought of the wrong they had done to innocent men. The quiet of the prison was broken only by the tread of the sentinel—the needless guard of the stock-bound captives. Sleepless from torture they passed in loneliness the early hours of the night. Yet they were not alone. As "the Lord was with Joseph" in the Egyptian prison, he was with them in the Philippian jail. At last they broke its silence. "At midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God," who, as Job declared, "giveth songs in the night;" and who, as the Psalmist said, ' 'looked down from heaven to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to death." Nor did God alone listen to their prayer and song, for ' 'the prisoners heard them." Murderers, thieves, robbers and outcasts, supposing the newly arrived prisoners to be like themselves, were roused from their guilty slumbers, not by curses and profanity so often on their own lips, but by the voice of prayer, which perhaps they had never heard; roused, not by low and foolish songs, but probably by Psalms of David, as pleasing to God in the Philippian jail as in the Temple at Jerusalem. Paul and Silas could sing in their darkness as Fanny Crosby in her blindness— This is my story, this is my song, Praising my Savior all the day long. But, as if the day were not long enough, their song was continued in the midnight hour. It resounded along their prison walls^ which were shaken to their foundation, as if even they were startled by so strange an event. An earthquake shook the living;

LIFE OF ST. PAUL FOR THE YOUNG. 537 tomb of the apostles, as did another that of the Lord to whom they prayed and sang. Bolts and bars were such no longer because loosed from their sockets. The shattered prison doors flew open. The stocks could no longer hold fast the feet of the apostles, nor chains the limbs of their fellow-prisoners. Yet none attempted to escape. As if awed by some mysterious presence, all remained in their cells; or, as we may suppose, soon gathered around the inner prison of the apostles. The keeper had been startled from his sleep. The earthquake that shook the prison wall made him quake with fear. He saw that the prison doors were open and took it for granted that the prisoners had fled. He knew that he would be disgraced, and that his life would be taken according to the Roman law if a single prisoner escaped. In despair he drew his sword to take it himself. "But Paul cried with a loud voice. Do thyself no harm: for we are all here." But this did not give him peace: his conscience troubled him. Calling for a light, with a blazing torch in his hand, trembling with terror, he rushed into the dungeon and "cast himself down before the apostles. He rejoiced that he had been saved from threatened death of body, but there was another and greater danger. He now believed what the poor slave girl had said, that these men were the servants of the Most High God, and showed the way of salvation. So he cried out, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" "And they said. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thy house." That was a strange midnight scene in the apostles' cell—so damp, dark and cheerless; then bright with the flaming torch; the lone apostles suddenly with the little congregation of the jailer, his family and prisoners, speaking unto them the word of the Lord, The jailer looked at Paul and Silas with a mingled feeling of sorrow, joy, pity, gratitude and love. "He took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes," which the day before had excited in him no pity. The waters from the same fountain in the prison- court which were used for their cleansing and healing, also became the waters of baptism for him and his family. But the prison dungeon was no fit place for such ' 'servants of the Most High God." The jailer had rudely "thrust them into the inner prison." Now he gently led them to his inner home,

538 IMPROVEMENT ERA. and ' 'set meat before them" in place of the prison fare, ' 'and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house." Of all the families of Philippi at that midnight hour, the most blessed was that of him who has been known for two thousand years as the Philippian jailer. In the morning the magistrates were greatly troubled. They were superstitious, believing that earthquakes were caused by their heathen gods because displeased with them. They also feared the Emperor Csesar when they learned that the men they had so cruelly treated without trial were Roman citizens, knowing they were in danger of losing their offices for life. They wanted to hush up the matter and quietly send away the apostles. So they sent word to the jailer, "Let those men go," and he gladly delivered the message. But if they had gone without anything more being done, it might have been said that they fled at the time of the earthquake, or that they had bribed the jailer to let them escape. Great injustice had been done. So Paul and Silas refused to leave the prison, simply because they were allowed to do So. Paul was a bold man as well as a Christian. He said of the magistrates, '"They have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us out privily? Nay, verily, but let them come themselves and fetch us out.'' And so, as the jailer had brought them from the inner prison, the magistrates "came and brought them out" of the prison itself, thus confessing that they were wrong and the apostles right. Paul and Silas had no revengeful spirit: they did not complain to the emperor of the men who had themselves broken Roman law. If they had left the prison without this confession of tlie magistrates, when Paul returned to Philippi it could have been said that he was the "pestilent fellow" who escaped from jail. But when he did return, he was known as the apostle whom God delivered, and many believed the Gospel for which he had been so shamefully imprisoned. Peter, when delivered from prison by the angel in Jerusalem, ' 'came to the house of Mary the mother of John where many were gathered praying." Paul and Silas went out of the prison and entered into the house of Lydia: and when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them and departed.

LIFE OF ST. PAUL FOR THE YOUNG. 539 Let us remember that Christianity in Europe began at Philippi, at a prayer-meeting of devout women only, who were in the habit of praying, meeting every Sabbath; that the first person whose heart the Lord opened to believe the Gospel of Christ was a tender-hearted woman, and the second was a hard-hearted heathen jailer; that the first of all the sermons preached in Europe was in a rude hut, and the second in a prison; and last but not least let us remember the question asked by the jailer concerning salvation, and remember the most blessed answer given by Paul, the only one that can be given.* CHAPTER XXIII. AMPHIPOLIS—THESSALONICA—BEREA. A Night in Amphipolis—Thessalonica—A Central City—Paul's Poverty and Labor —In the Synagogue—A Model Church—Jason—Paul and Silas Sent Away— Berea—Bereans—A Berean Study—Hunted Like Prey. Paul left Philippi with the marks of brutal treatment on his body, yet with pleasing memories of the band to whom he had been a blessing and who had been such to him. Thirty-three miles brought him to Amphipolis. It was beautifully situated three miles from the sea, bordering on a lake, sheltered by hills and almost encircled by a bend in a river. A neighboring plain, whose many streams made it fertile for cotton and corn, was almost covered with villages. There was no synagogue in Amphipolis or encouragement for preaching there. Paul and his company stayed a single night, then went thirty miles to Apollonia, and thence forty miles to Thessalonica, the capital of all Macedonia, to which the soldier in Paul's ^dsion had beckoned him from Troas. It was a far-famed city. It was connected with many and disatant places, being easily reached by roads and rivers and the sea; so that it was a great place for trade. It was a fitting place from which the Gospel could be sent in every direction. Thus Paul felt when he wrote after leaving Thessalonica about the Christians there- "From them the word of the Lord had sounded forth like a trumpet, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place." *Acts 16:31-33.

540 IMPROVEMENT ERA. There was one synagogue in it and that the only one in a vast region: in it Paul began his ministry. He was poor. For Christ he "suffered the loss of all things," including property. When ending his journey at Thessalonica he was probably penniless; nor did he find it easy to earn his daily bread, especially as a great famine in that place at that time increased the price of wheat sixfold. Had he not been helped by the Philippi church he would have suffered greatly. Like his fellow-Christians in Thessalonica, he was in deep poverty. He afterward wrote to them of these days when he was laboring night and day for his own support while he preached the gospel unta them. The trade he learned when a boy in Tarsus was of great use to him in Thessalonica and other places. This great apostle was not ashamed of honest toil, as he weaved goats' hair into tent-cloth in the house of Jason, a Jewish Christian with whom he had found lodging. After his persecution at Philippi only a few days before, we might think he would be afraid to go to the synagogue in Thessalonica, and tell the same things that had maddened the Jews there. But he boldly entered it and for three Sabbath days explained the Old Testament Scriptures, which told about the coming of Christ to the world, and then showed that these things foretold had happened. He said, "This is the Messiah Jesus whom I am preaching to you." Some of the Jews believed this and united with the Church. So did "Greeks, a great multitude, and of chief women not a few." Most of them were Gentiles. Paul told them that as Christians they would suffer persecutions, but they were ready to follow his noble example in whatever trials might come. They gave up their heathen idolatry which could give them no real peace, and rejoiced in what Paul told them of the true God, and of Jesus Christ who had risen from the dead, and with whom they could live forever in heaven. This was very different from the Pagan teaching that there is no life after death, and that those who have loved each other on earth can never meet again. The Church in Thessalonica became noted for its faithfulness, love, and liberality. It was known as the model Church in Macedonia and Achaia. There were many women in it. They learned what Christianity can do for woman. We must remember that in

LIFE OF ST. PAUL FOR THE YOUNG. 541 those days and those countries woman was not treated as she is now in Christian countries. It has been truly said, "If man owes much to Christ, woman owes still more," Certain Jews in Thessalonica were very angry at Paul's preaching. Their rage was also increased by the influence he had over the leading women of the city who had become Christians. They gathered a mob of worthless idlers of the lower classes and stoned the house of Jason. Finding Paul and Silas absent, they seized him and other Christians and dragged them before the magistrates, who had the power of life and death, and falsely said that they were making great trouble and calling Jesus the king instead of Caesar, the Roman emperor. The magistrates took money from the Christians as a pledge that they would act peaceably, and let them go. The city became quiet, but the apostles were in much danger from the magistrates and the mob they could excite at any time. With sorrowful hearts, they determined to flee. As when Saul was in Damascus, "the disciples took him by night and let him down by the wall in a basket;" so in Thessalonica, the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night into Berea. In the darkness, seen only by him to whom it is as the day, the two fugitives commenced their journey of fifty miles in danger of pursuit, aloag an unknown way which led them across large and flooded streams. Away from the strife of larger places, in the quiet, almost hidden town of Berea, among the gardens, streams and groves of palm and plane-trees, they hoped for a refuge for themselves and the gospel they carried. In this they were not mistaken. The storm in Thessalonica was followed by a calm in Berea. They went into the synagogue of the Jews. As in other synagogues, they wanted to prove that Jesus who had been crucified was the Messiah whom the Old Testament Scriptures said would come. In those places the Jews denied this, and refused to compare what Paul said with what the Scripture said. This was the case in Thessalonica: but those in Berea "were more noble than those at Thessalonica in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily whether these things were so." They had the right spirit, listening attentively and then carefully studying t he prophecies about

S42 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Christ. They had not these sacred rolls in their homes. Such were kept in the synagogues and read on the Sabbath and at other times. We can imagine a most interesting scene when the audience was turned into a Bible class with Paul for the teacher, teaching about Jesus and what happened to him; and then asking a Rabbi to turn to the places which told that these things would come to pass. We can imagine Paul saying, "Turn to Micah and see where the Messiah was to be born." The Rabbi takes that scroll from behind the curtain and reads, "Thou Bethlehem, out of thee shall come he that is to be ruler in Israel." Paul exclaims, ''Jesus was born in Bethlehem." He then asks, * 'Out of what other country should he be called? What does Hosea say about it?" The Babbi reads, "Out of Egypt have I called my Son.'' Paul exclaims, ' 'That is just what happened to the infant Jesus." He then asks, "What wonderful thing does Isaiah say the Messiah would do?" The Rabbi unrolls that scroll until he finds this prophecy, "The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing." Paul cries, "Jesus did just these things." The interest deepens and all begin to feel that "these things are so." But Paul is not yet done. He says, ' 'In that same scroll, to what is the Messiah compared?" The Rabbi reads, "He shall lead his flock like a shepherd, and gather the lambs in his arm." "Now," says Paul, "that is just what Jesus claimed to be, saying, 'I am the good shepherd;' and no one has ever lived of whom this was so true." Paul then tells the Rabbi to take down the Psalms and see how the Messiah would be treated by the rulers. This is the record, "Rulers take counsel together against the Lord." "So,'' says Paul, ' 'they did in Jerusalem. He was betrayed to thefti. Please find in the Zechariah roll how much was to be paid for the betrayal." There it is written, "They weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver." Paul exclaims, "That is just the amount Judas paid them." We can almost hear the excited class exclaiming, "Wonder-

LIFE OF ST. PAUL FOR THE YOUNG. • 543 ful! Wonderful and true!" They listen to the apostle's next question, "What spirit would the Messiah show in all the cruel treatment he would receive?" Once more the words of Isaiah are examined until these are found, *'He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearer's is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." Paul declares, "That is the spirit of meekness which Jesus showed always and everywhere.'' "How was Messiah to die?" asks Paul, calling for the roll of the Psalms. The Rabbi reads, ' 'They pierced my hands and my feet." "0 Bereans," cries Paul, "his prophecy v^^as fulfilled: Jesus \hom I preach was crucified. But his death is not the end of our study. Was he to remain in the grave and his body go back to dust? Rabbi, what did he say to God, as recorded in a Psalm of David?" With his hand trembling with excitement the Rabbi finds the words, "Thou wilt not suffer thy holy one to see corruption." Paul exclaims, "Jesus saw no corruption. He rose from the dead on the third day. It is especially because of his Resurrection that I believe Jesus was the Messiah." We have imagined only part of the subjects which the Bereans may have studied with Paul, as they "searched the Scriptures daily." These Berean Christians are "noble" examples to all. This is why their name has been given to towns and schools and classes and courses of Bible study. We should remember that they had the Old Testament only, telling of what Christ was to be and do, while we have the New Testament, telling what he has said and done. They had not the helps of our day for learning of him. But Paul's quiet and happy stay in Berea was not long. His enemies in Thessalonica learning where he had gone, and of the work he had done, followed him as hunters and dogs do their prey. The Bible class lost its teacher, who had once more to flee. Some of the converts went with him sixteen miles to the sea, where he took a ship which soon brought him in sight of a colossal statue of Minerva and her magnificent temple, which immediately reminded him of the heathenism of Athens. [to be continued.]