able, in the darker hours of sicknesses, and griefs, and trials, and partings, than in those brighter and happier moments in which alone she had, before the introduction of Christianity, been ever heard of. Every wife, and even every child, of these Tyrian converts, assembled upon this deeply interesting occasion; all accompanied the apostle; all knelt with him on the sea shore; all united with the beautiful equality of Christian love in his last prayer; and all were alike partakers of his parting blessing.

Wherever true religion, the religion of Jesus, advances, there does this Christian equality advance with it, never, indeed, interfering with that distinction so often and so plainly stated in God's own word, that "the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church," but elevating the wife to that distinguished place in Christian society, and investing her with that true dignity as far removed from

the debased condition of the mere sensualist of the heathen world, as from the burlesque importance of the heroine of chivalry and romance.

After the abode of a single day at Ptolemais, we find from the evangelist that they who were of Paul's company came unto Cesarea, and entered into the house of Philip the evangelist, which was one of the seven, and abode with him. We find from the sixth chapter of Acts that Philip was one of those "seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom," of whom Stephen was chief, who were selected to distribute the alms of the primitive Christians in the daily ministration. We hear of him again in the eighth chapter, called by a remarkable interposition of providence to baptize the Ethiopean eunuch, and after this service returning to Cesarea, where he was still dwelling at the time of the apostle's visit. Philip, who had now become an evangelist, which

was an order in the church next in rank to the apostles themselves, gladly received St. Paul into his house. He was, evidently, a married man; a sufficient answer to the Romish dogma of the celibacy of the clergy in the first ages of Christianity. While St. Paul and his companions tarried at his house, the following incident occurred, marking strongly the usages of those days, in which the symbolical mode of communicating ideas, so prevalent in the earlier times of the prophets, had not been entirely discontinued. "There came

down from Judea a certain prophet named Agabus." This was the same person who seventeen years before, as we are told in the eleventh chapter, "had signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world;" the fulfilment of which prophecy (which had already taken place) would naturally make the disciples doubly anxious to hear what testimony

so gifted a person would bear to the future destiny of their beloved St. Paul. Accordingly, when they were assembled together, Agabus "came unto them, and taking Paul's girdle, bound his own hands and feet with it, and said, 'Thus saith the Holy Ghost, so shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle, and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.'" So truly had St. Paul declared in the preceding chapter, "the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city that bonds and afflictions abide me.” In every city, almost in every house into which he entered, the same mournful note was struck; how deeply trying to the natural man, how appalling in ́the weaker moments and the more uncertain actings of faith even to the spiritual believer; yet was not this the whole with which St. Paul had to contend; it was not merely the constant prediction of approaching evil, but, far more difficult to bear, the equally con

stant weakness of misjudging friends. "When we heard these things, both we and they of that place besought him not to go up to Jerusalem." What is man, even at his best estate, but infirmity, but folly? "Both we," even "they of Paul's company," they who had heard the voice of God repeatedly calling His servant to the "great things he was to suffer for His name's sake," were just as anxious, just as solicitous as others, in urging him against the fulfilment of the divine command. Peter's " spare thyself," that faithless and faint-hearted advice which drew down from his divine Master the severest rebuke He ever uttered, has left behind it in the church a sadly influential example. To our blessed Lord, indeed, such faithless, advice was perfectly innocuous. "When the prince of this world cometh, he hath nothing in me," said the perfect Jesus. He was holy, harmless, undefiled; there were no evil propensities in His breast,