Acts 16

13. And on the sabbath we went out of the city by a river side, where prayer was wont to 14 be made; and we sat down, and spake unto the women which resorted thither. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us: whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were 15 spoken of Paul. And when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us. 16 And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of 17 divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying: the same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the most high God, which 18 shew unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of 19 her. And he came out the same hour. And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the 20 rulers, and brought them to the magistrates, saying, These men, being Jews, do exceedingly 21 trouble our city, and teach customs, which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans. And the multitude rose up together against them: and the magistrates rent off their clothes, and commanded to beat them. And when they had laid many 23 stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailor to keep them safely: who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. 25 And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners 26 heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands 27 were loosed. And the keeper of the prison awaking out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm: for we 29 are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down 30 before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? 31 And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. 32 And they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And he 33 took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and 34 all his, straightway. And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house. 35 And when it was day, the magistrates sent the serjeants, saying, Let those men go. And 36 the keeper of the prison told this saying to Paul, The magistrates have sent to let you go: 37 now therefore depart, and go in peace. But Paul said unto them, They have beaten us openly uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust 38 us out privily? nay verily; but let them come themselves and fetch us out. And the serjeants told these words unto the magistrates: and they feared, when they heard that they 39 were Romans. And they came and besought them, and brought them out, and desired them 40 to depart out of the city. And they went out of the prison, and entered into the house of Lydia: and when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them, and departed.

On the same page of Scripture there is the record of two most remarkable conversions, as different from each other as any two processes of mind, leading to the same result, can by possibility be. Lydia, the purple-seller of Thyatira, became a Christian through the gentle opening of the heart, as by the quiet river-side she attended to the things which were spoken of Paul. The Philippian jailer is converted, on the other hand, in a manner such as might be expected from the previous habits of ignorance and vice in which, we may reasonably suppose, he had been sunk. The critical, all-important question for all of us is, whether we be indeed Christ’s at present, and are following the lead of his Spirit; if so, how we were brought to Him, whether by the quiet drawings of gratitude and love, or by the gradual growth of reflectiveness and our experience of life’s hollowness, or by the trepidations of alarm, is but of little moment. E. M. G.

Strike from the world’s history what has been done for Jesus’ sake—go back along the track of time, and erase the deeds that have been wrought, the self-denials undergone, the bocks written, the lives lived, the martyrdoms endured, the stern missions begun and prosecuted, and how poor would the world be! Strike out the love to Jesus that human souls have felt, and all that it has prompted them to do, and what a waste would the past eighteen centuries present! The blackest pages of human history have been illumined by some deeds of true glory that love to Jesus has begotten. When wickedness has been most rampant, there have ever been some who have sung their songs in the night, irradiated the moral gloom with their light, and been ready to seal their affection by their blood. J. D.

13. In Europe, as in Asia, Paul preaches chiefly in the cities and large towns, that a deeper and broader impression may be made at the first, and the truth scattered more widely afterward. For, in ancient as in modern times, the populous centers exercised a controlling influence over social and religious customs. But the first announcement of the gospel in Europe—in Philippi—was remarkable both as to the place and the hearers. Nothing could have been more simple and unassuming. In the city was no synagogue. Nor did Paul find an opening for highway preaching. But out of the city, by a still river-side, in a spot where a few godly women, Jewish proselytes, were accustomed to meet and pray together on the Sabbath, the apostle began his work in Europe. It was only a quiet talk about Christ, while speaker and hearers sat together in a little group. But, like the Master at Jacob’s well, Paul throws into this simple ministry as much earnestness of purpose and thoroughness of instruction as afterward he employed in addressing the vast multitude of cultured Athenians. And this unreported conversation produced a rich harvest, while the grand discourse at Athens was almost barren of fruit.

14. A woman was Paul’s first European convert; from Thyatira, a city in the province of “Asia.” So that the first convert in Greece is from the very province in Asia Minor where the Spirit had forbidden them to preach. And the Lord opened her heart; the same Lord that had sent his ambassadors from Asia into Europe. The process of her conversion seems also very natural and simple. Her heart, once closed, is now opened; not by force, but in a way suited to a free intelligent nature. For it was opened to truth, which contained only high, pure, divine, blessed motive. It was opened to hear, to heed, to receive gladly with all the grasp of intellect and heart, with all the energy of will in self-consecration, the truths of life, “the things spoken of Paul.” B.—The Lord had laid words on Paul’s lips suited to find entrance to her heart; He has bestowed on her the listening ear to receive the voice of truth, the opened eye to see its light. And where now the last doubt gives way, and it is given her by grace to believe in Christ, how completely is sketched forth the blessed change which has had place first in her mind, but thereafter in her whole life and destiny! Van O.

15. Then followed the confession of her new faith, her baptism, and her grateful offer of hospitality and Christian service. Altogether the story is an attractive and instructive Christian idyl. B.—With the baptism of Lydia that of her “household” was associated. Whether we are to understand by this term her children, her slaves, or workpeople, or all these collectively, can not easily be decided. But we have here an example of that family religion to which Paul often alludes in his Epistles. The “connections of Chloe,” the “household of Stephanas,” the “church in the house” of Aquila and Priscilla, are parallel cases. H.

Christianity adopted and shared the distinguishing characteristic of Judaism as a family religion. The children of Jews were accounted heirs of the covenant. And it would seem that, if Jewish Christians had been denied this same relation, they would have demanded it, and a great controversy must then have arisen. Whether there were or not infants in any of the several baptized households can not certainly be determined. But the unexplained and unqualified mention of households surely implies that infants were included. B.—Who can believe that not one infant was found in all these families, and that Jews, accustomed to the circumcision, and Gentiles, accustomed to the lustration of infants, should not have also brought them to baptism? Beng.—The practice of infant baptism does not rest on inference but on the continuity and identity of the covenant of grace to Jew and Christian, the sign only of admission being altered. A.

And we have here the first example of that Christian hospitality which was so emphatically enjoined, and so lovingly practiced, in the Apostolic Church. The scenes by the river-side, and in the house of Lydia, are beautiful prophecies of the holy influence which women, elevated by Christianity to their true position, and enabled by divine grace to wear “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,” have now for centuries exerted over domestic happiness and the growth of piety and peace. H.

16-21. For the first time in Paul’s experience opposition and persecution came directly and exclusively from the Gentiles. The motive, too, was entirely disconnected with his religious teaching. It came from human hate produced by disappointed selfishness; and this was occasioned by a humane action. B.—A poor bond-girl, possessed with a spirit which was supposed to inspire oracles like those uttered by the Pythoness at Delphi, drove a gainful trade for her masters in the oracles which she vended, probably to the wild natives who frequented the market outside the city walls. As Paul and his companions went out to the place of prayer, she followed them with the continued cry, “These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.” S.—Repeating this for many days, her words must have become known throughout the city. At length Paul, in the very spirit of the Master (of compassion for the possessed and of indignation toward the satanic possessor) and after His manner, under His inspiration and in His name, commanded the evil spirit to come out of her. The whole account—Paul’s spirit and words, and Luke’s statement of the consequent fact (that “he came out the same hour”)—shows that she was a demoniac, or “one possessed with a devil.” Though the evil spirit in her, whether by constraint or with malicious purpose, gave true testimony to the missionaries, yet the source whence it came would taint the testimony itself. Therefore Paul, like his Master, would none of it. B.

The whole history of the Acts shows that the direct agency of the Evil Spirit is made subservient to the cause of Christ. In the case of Ananias (5: 3-5) he is made to preach to the world a perpetual warning against the sin of sacrilege; in the case of Simon Magus (8: 20), against the sin of simony. In the case of Elymas at Paphos (13: 10-12), Satan is defeated and Christ is glorified. Satan meets the apostle in Philippi, and flatters him by the mouth of her whom he had possessed. But his adulations are rejected, and he is cast out, and the Gentile world is taught that the spirit in their divination and oracles is a spirit of darkness.

19. The hope of their gains was gone. A clew to the powerful motive of persecutions against Christianity. Both the persecutions from Heathenism, mentioned in the Acts, are from this source. In the account of both, the word craft occurs; here, and in 19: 24, 25. As Blunt remarks: “The Priesthood, in all its branches, contemplated the advance of Christianity with dismay.

It emptied their temples, curtailed their sacrifices, reduced their profits, exposed their frauds.” 20. Being Jews. Christianity was hated as Judaism by the heathens, and as worse than heathenism by the Jews. It had to contend against Judaism and Heathenism, and it triumphed over both. W.

The owners’ investment had lost its value, and the law had no remedy to meet the case. Caring nothing for their own souls, they cared not for this one now released from such terrible thraldom. Their gains were their supreme thought and care. Since these were hopelessly gone, in their rage they sought revenge by stirring up the ignorant populace, who had a superstitious interest in the girl’s sooth-saying, to assault the strangers and drag them into the forum. There, before the magistrates (the Duumviri, or prætors), concealing the facts, they cunningly resort to another charge. Referring to Paul and Silas only as Jews, they accuse them of introducing customs not lawful for Romans to receive. Their charge had a color of reason in the laws which prohibited Romans from forsaking their religion. But its chief force and its success with the magistrates lay in the facts: that the Jews had been just then expelled from Rome, and that Philippi, a Roman colony—i. e., a Rome in miniature—may and ought to imitate the metropolis. This race-prejudice, and just enacted example of intolerance, instantly won the magistrates to an illegal and iniquitous compliance with the will of the mob.

22-24. The Scourging and Imprisonment of Paul and Silas.—By command of the two magistrates, the lictors rent off with violence the garments so that the flesh was bare, and laid many stripes upon them. B.—It is difficult for us to estimate the severity of this punishment. The victim was beaten on the naked flesh with thick rods by trained professional executors. The insignia of a Roman ruler consisted of a bunch of rods tied together like a sheaf, and an axe protruding from the end of the bundle. The rods symbolized secondary, and the axe capital, punishment. Arnol.

No inquiry was instituted, no time or means of defense afforded; not even the opportunity to plead their Roman citizenship. This fact Paul would not now thrust upon them for many good reasons; all of them for the furtherance of the gospel, as we hereafter see. One may be referred to here. Paul, like his Lord, opened not his mouth before these persecutors. “As seeing Him who is invisible,” he endured that severe Roman scourging that he might illustrate to those believers, and to all thereafter, the spirit of self-sacrifice and the force of trust under the fire of suffering. At Corinth, not long after, writing to the Thessalonians, he recalls this cruel experience, “how we were shamefully entreated at Philippi.”

Then, with their backs lacerated, they are thrown into prison; and, as if more dangerous and guilty than other criminals, their feet are painfully distended and shut up immovably in “the stocks.” By this unrelieved position of constraint and distention the pain of their bruised bodies is intensified. Yet through the afternoon, and up to the midnight hour, their faith and fortitude held firm.

25, 26. Their Praying Song in the Night, and the Consequent Earthquake.—They prayed in song to God. Their song was prayer, their prayer was song. What they sang we may infer. For David’s trustful utterances would well suit their needs and their hearts. Yet not these alone; for theirs was a larger knowledge, a richer experience of a realized Lord and Comforter. And out of that revealed experience, how readily their souls could pour themselves out in trustful rejoicing and fervent intercession! Their praising prayer was a sermon, too, to a strange congregation; for the prisoners heard. What was its ultimate effect, we know not. But none of those listeners used the opportunity for escape, when unnaturally the earth was shaken, and supernaturally the doors were opened and their chains loosed. They must have felt what we know: that there was a connection between these marvels and the sublime utterances of praise and supplication that preceded them. Right well are we, here and in this, assured that God is the hearer and answerer of prayer.

27, 28. The Prison-Keeper’s Suicide hindered by Paul.—By the stern Roman law, death was the penalty of a jailer’s unwatchfulness and the escape of his prisoners. Finding the doors wide open and inferring that the prisoners had fled, in his proud Roman despair he was about to take his own life, as the only honorable alternative for retrieving the disgrace. Suicide, among the Romans, was accounted not only lawful, but under irretrievable misfortune was regarded as a virtue. B.—And this very city, Philippi, had been famous in the annals of suicide. Here Cassius, unable to survive defeat, covered his face in the empty tent, and ordered his freedmen to strike the blow. Here Brutus bade adieu to his friends, exclaiming, “Certainly we must fly, yet not with the feet, but with the hands.” And many of their adherents ended their last struggle for the republic by self-inflicted death. H.

The same prison lamps that revealed to the keeper the open doors would, through those doors, reveal the jailer to Paul, and his purpose would be conjectured by the drawing of his sword. And now the eager sympathy of the apostle’s heart on the instant coöperated with God’s purpose in the earthquake and the supernaturally opened doors. That purpose was not the release of the prisoners, but the awakening of the jailer’s conscience so that a saving impression might be made upon his hardened heart. Paul’s loud, impassioned cry was but the seconding of God’s saving purpose toward the man. And with what sublime emphasis did that cry, forced out of Paul’s Christlike, loving heart, Do thyself no harm! sum up the supreme design of Christ’s infinite love, as expressed in his redemption and revealed through his gospel.

29-32. The Keeper’s Question and Paul’s Answer. The Word pressed home upon Opened Hearts.—The instant revulsion of feeling consequent upon such an appeal, enforced by the assurance that none had fled, joined with the earthquake shock and the evidences of miraculous visitation—all combined to arouse in his conscience a new and overwhelming fear. It was not a dread of temporal danger; for all was quiet now, and his armed assistants were at his side. It was the kindling of sensibility, through a fear wrought in his callous spiritual nature by these startling tokens of a Divine presence and an unseen world. Impelled by this fear, out of the depths of his aroused soul, as he cast himself at the feet of Paul and Silas, came the intense yearning cry, “What must I do to be saved?” Those oft-repeated and widely-reported words of the frenzied girl must have left an impression upon his ignorant, superstitious nature. He now felt, in his confused, amazed terror, “These men must be servants of the most high God, to show the way of salvation.” And so the question forms itself to the inward craving of his consciously lost soul: “To be saved, what must I do?”

That this was his condition and this his meaning, the answer of the faithful men of God clearly shows. Sirs, or Lords, he had called them, as in his heathen thought he prostrated himself in almost worship before them. Believe, is their answer, not in us, but in the one only LORD, Jesus Christ! and thou shalt be saved! They saw, in his trembling and in his despairing cry, his strong conviction of sin, his craving for deliverance, his yearning to know and willingness to do what was demanded of him; and they said all that could be said to any wretched, sinful soul of man. They put into their answer the whole gospel. They declared all that is essential to human salvation. They demand no “doing” of the man save faith, or trust: faith in the Person of Christ—trust in His redeeming work. And who this Christ was, what saving work He had done, what it was to trust this Saviour and to receive Him, Paul instantly went on to tell this eagerly listening man, and the members of his household who were now gathered around them. There was no magical suddenness in these conversions. From this summary text, the Word of the Lord—about the Lord—was clearly spoken to all; and they, like