vidence in human affairs, goes on thus: 'Still, it is of use in human life to believe that God takes care of human things; and that punishments, though sometimes late (since God is so much occupied in his vast cares), will never fail of being inflicted on crimes; and that man is not therefore the most nearly allied by birth to the Deity, in order that he should be next to the brutes in debasement. But it is the special consolation of imperfect human nature, that God cannot indeed do all things. For neither can He call death to his own relief, should He desire it—a noble refuge which He has given to man in the midst of so many evils; nor can He endow man with immortality; by which things the power of nature is doubtless declared, and that is what we call God.'1 1 It was impossible that the inferior multitude should remain uninfected by this loosening of all belief. Servius, in a note on Virgil's Æneid, remarks expressly, that 'unbelief is equally spread among the high and the low.' The lines of Juvenal are well known : 'Esse aliquos Manes, et subterranea regna, Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur.'* So Seneca says: "No one is any longer so much a child that he must be shown there is no Cerberus nor Tartarus.' While now, on the one hand, the educated and the uneducated suffered themselves to be deceived by the infidelity of their times, another and a larger portion—and in some measure the same portion-of the people threw themselves into the arms of the most unbounded superstition, as had already been done 1 Hist. Nat. Lib. ii. ch. 7. 2 Sat. ii. 149. Thus rendered, or rather paraphrased, by Gifford :- That ghosts in subterraneous regions dwell, By children questioned, and by men despised.' by the philosophers. The first effect of this superstition was, that men were not content with their own and the Grecian gods, but brought to Rome the gods of all lands and worshipped them. They gloomily felt the incapacity of their own gods to satisfy them; they fancied they could supply the want by increasing the number; and the more foreign the deity, the more did their excited minds promise themselves from it. To the unhappy heathen, who were running, in the disquietude of their hearts, now to the heathen temple, now to the Jewish synagogue, a touching address was made by Commodianus, a simple and unaffected Christian of Africa: 'They must not, in the disquietude of their hearts, seek for rest there; the true and real peace of mind can be imparted to them only through Christ.' Since the number of the gods was in this manner continually increasing, it was natural, too, that the superstitious worship of them, and the multitude of their priests, and temples, and rites, should increase above all measure. Thus in Lucian, Momus is made to say: 'Thou Apollo, with thine oracles, art no longer alone celebrated; but every stone and every altar utters responses,-every stone, at least, upon which oil has been poured, and which is crowned with a garland and has beside it a juggler, of which there are now so many.' The more abominable vice and licentiousness became, on the one hand, the more did men yield themselves up, on the other, to superstition, in order to quiet conscience and appease the gods. Indeed, why should we wonder at the mass of superstition among the common people, and in later ages, when such a man as Augustus, the Roman emperor, could dread to be alone in the night; when he was afraid of thunder and lightning like a child, and carried about with him magical remedies in order to avert these dangers; and when, too, he was frightened, whenever he happened in the morning, instead of his right shoe, to put on his left shoe first ?1 Especially pernicious under this state of things was the influence of the enormous multitude of soothsayers, interpreters 1 SUETONIUS, Vita Augusti, c. 78, 90, 91, 92. of signs and of lightning, astrologers, palmisters, and necromancers. These all ministered to the ungovernable passions of the populace, who, tormented by a thousand cares and anxieties for the consequences of their own vices or the wickedness of others, longed to penetrate the darkness of futurity. By this form of superstition, heathenism was particularly distinguished. The Indians, Persians, Egyptians, Gauls, and Germans, had their soothsayers; and the Greeks and Romans carried these arts to such an extent, that a hundred different kinds of divination are enumerated as having been in use among them. The great kept astrologers and soothsayers continually near them in their palaces; and the case before us is, therefore, very far from being a rare instance of the practice. Forty-seventh Week-Fifth Day. SERGIUS PAULUS.-ACTS XIII. 7. THE dominion which Bar-jesus had acquired over the mind of the Roman governor of Cyprus was not so absolute as to shut out all desire for further knowledge. The labours of Saul and Barnabas at Paphos were so active, and produced so marked a sensation in that city, that the report of their proceedings, and of their extraordinary doctrine, soon reached him; and under the influence of that inquisitiveness, that craving for rest, which was last evening described, he sent for them to hear what they might say. They declared to him the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ; they told him there was pardon for sin, rest for disquiet, certainty for doubt. Before his relaxed and languid state of mind, they set forth the invigorating realities of the spiritual mind— of life with Christ in God. These were indeed strange things. The governor was visibly impressed by them. Perceiving this, the magian put forth all his strength and subtilty in opposition to the teaching of the apostles, by which he saw that his own influence with Sergius Paulus was sorely imperilled. He spared nothing; and the violence of his invectives, the atrocity of his imputations, and the unscrupulous tortuosity of his arguments, may be judged from the vehemence of indignation which they awakened in the minds of the apostles. It cannot be doubted that he 'blasphemed' to the uttermost that worthy name' through which they had proclaimed salvation; and we know very well that there was nothing which Saul, at least, could less endure than such blasphemy. He felt that further argument was useless with such a man; and that it became him rather to vindicate the power of that Lord whom he had vilified, by invoking his judgment upon one who thus sought the murder of a soul. He felt the Divine Spirit move within him, and warrant the strong utterance to which he was impelled, as, fixing a look, stern and terrible, on the countenance of the impostor, he said, 'O full of all subtilty and mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? And now, behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thee, and thou shalt be blind, not seeing the sun for a season.' And instantly the light wavered in his eyes, and a mist, deepening into thick darkness, shut it out altogether; and he became 'Dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon.' He had not a word more to say. Trembling and abashed, he who had the moment before held up so bold a front against Christ and his commissioned servants, now sought only to withdraw to hide in some obscure corner his burden and his shame; and to that end he blindly groped around in search of some pitying hand to lead him forth. It is probable that Saul's own blinding on the way to Damascus suggested to him this form of judgment; and, as in that case, he limited it to a season,' -a merciful restriction which has been too much overlooked, but which suggests the probability that Bar-jesus eventually recovered his sight; and we are not precluded from the hope, that this correction may have been salutary to him. It is certain that it confirmed the mind of the Roman governor, who, having witnessed this signal miracle, 'believed, being astonished at the doctrine of the Lord.' Of this personage, it remains to notice one curious matter. The title applied to designate the office of Sergius Paulus, in the authorized version, is 'deputy,' an indefinite term, probably chosen to avoid a difficulty, of which the translators were conscious. In the original Greek, however, the term is the definite one of 'proconsul' (aveúnaтos), and the accuracy of this designation, as applied to the Roman governor of Cyprus, has been very strongly called in question on historical grounds. But the result of more exact and searching inquiry has only been, as usual, to establish the minute accuracy of the sacred writer on evidence not to be shaken. Augustus, in pursuance of his deep policy of quietly concentrating all real power in his own hands, made a division of the provinces between himself and the senate; conceding to the latter the quiet and peaceful ones, and retaining for himself those that required the presence of troops. He thus remained entire master of the army; but although the object of this stroke of policy was transparent, it does not seem to have been in any way opposed or censured. The administration of the senatorial provinces was given every year, by the senate, to officers who bore the title of proconsuls; while Augustus selected the other governors, called proprætors, whom he appointed when and as long as he pleased. Now, we are reminded on the authority of Strabo and Dio Cassius, that in this division of the provinces the island of Cyprus was allotted to the emperor; and it is hence urged that the proper title of Sergius Paulus must have been proprætor, not proconsul, which Luke gives to him. But those who argued thus, forgot that the division first made underwent many changes. Such a change happened with respect to Cyprus. One of the authorities for the former statement (Dio Cassius) reports that subsequently the emperor exchanged Cyprus, together with Gallia Narbonensis, with the senate for Dalmatia, which had before |