LECTURE X.

ACTS xxviii. 30, 31.

AND PAUL DWELT TWO WHOLE YEARS IN HIS OWN HIRED HOUSE, AND RECEIVED ALL THAT CAME IN UNTO HIM, PREACHING THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND TEACHING THOSE THINGS WHICH CONCERN THE LORD JESUS CHRIST WITH ALL CONFIDENCE, NO MAN FORBIDDING HIM.

WE left the apostle at the close of the last lecture, when by God's providence, after the horrors of the shipwreck, he, in company with all those who sailed with him, and whom God had given him, "escaped safe to land." The island upon which they were cast was called Melita, now Malta, in the Mediterranean, and no sooner had St. Paul landed there,

than it pleased God, by a remarkable instance of His providential regard to His servant, to bring him into that degree of notice with the barbarous inhabitants of the island, which should insure their subsequent attention to the truths he might deliver to them. When all had got safe to land, and were engaged in protecting themselves against the rain and cold to which they were still exposed, St. Paul was occupied with the lowest of the company in providing fuel for the fire which they had kindled; and we are told that "when he had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them upon the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live." How remarkable it is, that in the most unenlightened

minds, there is still a general sense of the necessity of retribution; a general expectation, although frequently an erroneous one, that even in this world, the wicked shall not go unpunished. Thus we find that while in our Lord's time even the enlightened Jews could not witness the fall of the tower of Siloam, without feeling convinced that they, upon whom it fell, were sinners above all the Galileans; in the case before us, the barbarous Maltese could not behold a viper fasten upon the hand of a poor, shipwrecked stranger, without at once pronouncing him to be a murderer. It is in vain that our Lord corrected this erroneous conclusion in the former instance by His precept, and in the latter by his providence; men are still prone to recognize in great afflictions the invariable accompaniments of great delinquencies, forgetting that as a general rule, the word of God has declared that, in this

world, "All things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; to the clean and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth and to him that sacrificeth not." However this general rule of God's providence may be ocasionally broken, as it unquestionably is, to convince men that the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth in the kingdoms of the earth, it is usually maintained. Our heavenly Father maketh His sun to shine and His rain to fall alike on all quarters of His field, that the tares and the corn may grow together undisturbed and often undistinguished until the harvest, and not till the hour that the sickle is put in, not till the day that the doors of the everlasting garners shall be opened, will this general rule be dispensed with, or the spiritual state of every man before God be fully revealed and for ever ratified. The humble and confiding child of God knows that it is

so, and delights to know it-he hopes for nothing, he fears nothing, he expects nothing here below, and is even willing to subscribe to the opinion of the apostle, that "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." He therefore waits in the full assurance of hope, for the day when all things shall be adjusted, when every cross providence shall be set straight, when the servants of God who have laboured through evil report and good report in this world, and have received for their compensation, as their Lord before them, "the reproaches of many people," shall be acknowledged and rewarded and crowned in that "new heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," and whence His enemies shall be banished with an everlasting banishment from the presence of the Lord and of His glory. Brethren, live for that day and for that hour! If even the heathen painter could think no