also, in which we shall need Him
still in the experiences of heaven.

What shall we say of the place to which the Epistle was sent, and of
that from which it was written; and of the writer, the bearer, the
readers; and of the occasion and the time?

Philippi now, so travellers tell us, is a scene of beautiful and silent
ruin. Near the head of the fair Archipelago, amidst scenery of
exquisite beauty, near the range of Pangaeus, now Pirnari, on the banks
of the quiet Gangas, lie the relics of the once busy city, visited only
by the herdsman and the explorer. By it or through it ran a great road
from West to East, called by the Romans the Egnatian Way. The double
battle of Philippi, B.C. 42, when the Oligarchy fell finally before the
rising Empire, made the plain famous. Augustus planted a _colonia_ in
the town. It thus became a miniature Rome, as every "colony" was. It
had its pair of petty consuls (_duumviri_; the _strategoi_ of Acts xvi.
20) and their lictors (A.V. "serjeants," _rhabdouchoi_). And it
faithfully reproduced Roman pride in the spirit of its military
settlers. It had its Jewish element, as almost every place then had;
but the Jews must have been few and despised; their place of worship
was but a "prayer-house" (_proseuche_), outside the walls, on the
river's bank (Acts xvi. 13). We need not recount in detail the history
of the first evangelization (A.D. 52) of the difficult place. We
recollect sufficiently the address to the pious Jewesses and
proselyte-women in the "prayer-house"; the conversion and baptism of
Lydia; the rescue of the poor girl possessed with the "spirit of
Pytho"; the tumult, and the trial before the duumvirs; the scourge, the
inner prison, the hymn at midnight, the earthquake, and the salvation
of the jailor's life and soul; the message sent through the lictors in
the morning, then the respectful approach of the magistrates
themselves, and the retirement of the Missionaries "to another city,"
along the Egnatian road. It is enough now to remember, what the very
existence of the Epistle reveals to us, the growth and life of the
little mission-church planted amidst such storms, and in a climate, so
to speak, full of possible tempests at any hour. In the Epistle, we
arrive at a date some nine years later than the first visit of St Paul.
Twice during that period, and perhaps only twice, we find him at
Philippi again; late in A.D. 57 (Acts xx. 1) and early (it was the
sweet spr