Fanny. "I did not know I was smiling, but it seems to me so very absurd for people to think it can make any difference whether it is a raised or a flat surface that they worship."

Mrs. Walters. "And yet, dear Fanny, how often are we all guilty of similar absurdities. We are exempt from one folly which we see in another, and pride ourselves on being free from it, while we are perhaps indulging in what is quite as prominent a fault, and very likely still more wrong.

"You may now look at the map, and you will see that the Apostles having entered the island towards the east, left it at its western extremity. They then sailed for Perga-see here, on the main land, in a north-west direction: the sea between was called the sea of Pamphylia, Pamphylia being the name of the province in which Perga was situated. This name is supposed to be derived from the Greek word for many nations, and it is probable that from its situation it was resorted to by many for the purposes of traffic; it lies so very centrically."

Madelaine. "It lies just opposite the mouths of the Nile, and Greece is about the same distance."

Mary." And there were people from Pamphylia at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost."

Mrs. Walters. "Antioch in Pisidia is the next place that comes before us. It is another of the cities built by Seleucus. The account of St. Paul's proceedings here is very interesting. His address in the synagogue; the request made by the Gentiles that he would again address them; the great interest excited in consequence, inducing nearly the whole city to assemble on the next Sabbath to hear the word of God. Then the rage of the Jews, their rejection of the truth themselves, and their anger that the Gentiles should be addressed as they were by the apostles, It is all told in a few words yet with much effect."

"I beg your pardon for interrupting you," I here interposed. "but I never read that account without feeling so much ashamed of the part the devout women took in the expulsion of Paul and Barnabas. There is much spoken and written upon female influence, but when we read in the pages of history, how much frequently it has been employed for evil than for good, it almost makes one shrink from using what we possess, lest we should be putting the weights in the wrong balance."

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Mrs. Walters assented, adding, "And these were not the careless, irreligious women of Antioch; how sad to think that such should often do less real injury to the cause of Christ than those who have a misdirected zeal! In Iconium, a city of Lycaonia where the apostles went after their expulsion from Antioch, we again find the Jews not only rejecting the gospel themselves but exciting the Gentiles against them. Jane, you have the map before you, have you found the next places named?" Jane. "Derbe and Lystra."

Mrs. Walters. "At Lystra we have a most remarkable instance of the fickle nature of popularity, and of the speedy way in which benefits that have been conferred are forgotten. At first they called them gods, after seeing the miracle that Paul had wrought; even the priests of Jupiter would have sacrificed to them, and it was only by using the most strenuous exertions that they could prevent it."

"How very differently impostors would have acted,” said Fanny Barker, "they would have been glad to have been patronized in that way."

Mrs. Walters. "But how soon the revulsion of feeling took place. In the very next verse we read of their stoning St. Paul, and they thought that they had really killed him."

"Paul must have thought of his conduct then," said Mary Grant, "when Stephen was stoned."

"No doubt he did, and very likely he offered a mental prayer that those now acting as he had once done, might be eventually influenced by the same grace, and might one day preach that gospel which they were endeavoring to crush. And from what we read of his subsequent visits to these places in Acts xvi. these hopes seems to have been realized.

"After being stoned, he retraced his steps, and embarked at Attalia for Antioch; after remaining some time there, he visited Jerusalem, then returned once more to Antioch, and it was after he and Barnabas parted there, that Paul, accompanied by Silas, returned to Derbe and Lystra."

“An uninspired historian would not have said anything about the contention between Paul and Barnabas," remarked Fanny, who was particularly alive to anything connected with the

Evidences.

"Modern biographers are often very much blamed for saying anything about the foibles of those whose lives they write," remarked, "and it really is a very difficult thing for those who undertake to delineate character to know what to keep out of sight and what to admit. But we can see a reason for these things being recorded in scripture. We should certainly despair were the characters drawn there, spotless. We should argue that a different standard was required by which we should be judged; and feeling the impossibility of being faultless ourselves, we should also think that a lower standard of spiritual attainments was all that was required of us, and should consider ourselves and the characters we meet with in Scripture as in fact two distinct classes of beings having little in common, and whose excellencies we might in vain attempt to aspire to."

"To be the best, is but the fewest faults to have,"

quoted Mrs. Walters. "I often think, if the conviction of this is so painful to us, who see only the outward actions which are so restrained by a variety of causes, what must it be to our Saviour, to whom all hearts are open, and to whom thoughts appear in as

substantial a form as actions do to ourselves?"

Phrygia is the next district named. The people here were more superstitious than other Asiatics: they are said to have invented the use of augury, as well as of some other kinds of divination. They were a remarkably effeminate people, so much so that Aristotle forbade the use of their music which partook of the same character. In Phrygia is found the beautiful Angora goat, the hair of which is so fine and silky."

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Galatia, or Gaul-Asia, so called from its being colonized by Gauls, was inhabited by a very corrupt race of people. St. Paul appears to have visited this region twice, as you will see by a reference to Acts xvii. 23; and as you well know, he addressed an epistle to its inhabitants. Thence he passed by Mysia; the derivation of which some think is from a word signifying guilty, but others consider it derived from the beech trees which abound here just as Buckinghamshire is named from the same cause. They then came down to Troas."

Madelaine. "Oh, mamma! is that Troy?"

"I believe it is within a few miles of the site of old Troy. A very interesting recent traveller describes her disappointment when sailing along this coast, at finding the extent of that far

famed kingdom not to exceed that of many a nobleman's domain in England. And it occurred to me while reading the remark, that it is with countries as with characters, many obtain all their notoriety from circumstances which are far from being praiseworthy in themselves or beneficial to others."

"And that is easily accounted for," I remarked. "Has it never struck you in reading biography, how differently you would have written certain parts; that the qualities which the biographer most admired, appeared to your view very dubious; and that actions which were attributed to one set of motives, seemed capable of having their origin in causes directly opposite? So much of both history and biography consist less in the expression of facts than of opinions, that we can easily see that the character of an individual, after his cotemporaries have passed away, really rests not so much in what he actually was, as on what he appeared to be, in the perhaps not very correct mirror of his delineator's mind."

"And that constitutes," observed Mrs. Walters, "the great charm of Scripture Biography-there everything is true and in its just proportion; there is no drawing for effect, but all is told so simply and naturally, that though all we know of the most prominent characters may be compressed into a nutshell, yet we feel an intimacy with them, and are able to imagine how they would have thought and acted under all kinds of circumstances. Troas has to the Christian derived a new celebrity, of a very different kind from that which it before enjoyed, as being the place where the vision appeared to Paul."

Julia here remarked "that she had heard a sermon once upon the words 'Come over into Macedonia and help Us ;' in which the parallel had been drawn with the address to Paul at his conversion, 'Why persecutest thou Me.' And a variety of texts were referred to, showing how the Lord does indeed identify himself with his people, and how those who engage in the great work of winning souls to Him, he is graciously pleased to call fellow-laborers with him."

"Samothracia is an island with a good port, Philippi is a name celebrated in history."

"Oh!" said Jane Grant, brightening up, "is that the place where the famous battle was fought?"

"Yes, but that took place about ninety years before St. Paul's

visit. The account of his stay here is very interesting, and the miraculous circumstances attending his release from prison have been very lately the subject of our attentive consideration.

"Will you allow me to mention one circumstance," I said, "connected with the attempt of the gaoler at self-destruction. I knew we should reach Philippi in our journeyings to-day, and meeting with the following passage in a book I was reading yesterday, I have brought it down with me, and will, if you please, read an extract. It is speaking of a collection of antiquities preserved in the museum at Bonn, on the Rhine. One of these tablets records the entombment of Marcus Cælius, a general who was killed here in a great battle fought by Varus, in the tenth year of the Christian era. Three entire legions of the army of Varus were destroyed, when the general killed himself in despair, and several of his officers did the same, as was the case with many of the Chinese in their late struggles against the British forces. What is remarkable in the history of this Roman family, and at the same time shews the prevalence of the practice of selfdestruction, is the fact, that the father of Varus slew himself after the battle of Philippi, and the grandfather did the same after the battle of Pharsalia.'"

"It always gives me," said Mrs. Walters, "a feeling of great pain when I hear the virtues of the ancient Romans extolled, for you can only praise them at the expense of those qualities which the Christian is commanded to cultivate. As to their bravery, it appears to me to resemble the courage of the modern duellists, whose cowardice is such that they cannot face a world whose favor they have lost."

"But surely, mamma, you would make a difference between the heathen Romans who knew nothing of a future state, and men who profess to believe in the Bible ?" said Madelaine.

"Certainly not, my dear, if they only profess what they do not possess; and this similarity of conduct only shows us how little better than heathenism a mere nominal profession of Christianity is, and that those who would rush into eternity because what they call the laws of honor require it, would worship the gods of ancient Rome if that were the religion of those whose favor they most highly valued, provided their early prepossessions had been directed in favor of it.