Peter at Lydda and Joppa

Return to Jerusalem. Paul the Guest op Peter. Description of Ltdda. Peter Cures Eneas. Invited to Joppa. Miraculously raises Dorcas to Life.

i In the heart no beating, on the cheek no rose; Placid, but rigid, the pale lips close.

No need for hushing her anguish now;
No wailings will trouble that placid brow.

No wild lamentings the mourners make;
No tumult of minstrels that sleep can break*

Silence those death-wails of wild despair: ‘Not dead, but sleeping f The Life is there!

The gates of Hades, the gates of brass,
Which through the ages none living pass,

Before those accents quake as with thunder,
Quiver like aspens, and part asunder.”

—The Three Wakingg, <fec

“Like the commander of an army he went about inspecting the ranks, what part was compact, what was in good order, what needed his presence.” — Clurysostom Hum, XXI* iii Jerusalem, take the opportunity of scattering in the towns and villages through which they passed, the seed of the kingdom: refreshing the Churches which had already been organised, and planting others. The furrows seem to have been inviting the immortal seed. Everywhere they were hailed as heralds of good tidings. AVe can picture them, without let or hindrance, traversing these well-known valleys of Ephraim and Benjamin, conscious of their Master’s presence and blessing; perhaps remembering the Divine promise spoken by the prophet of Judah, “Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry, for I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.” (Jer. xxxL 4, 5). “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation” (Isa. lii. 7).

One of the most interesting episodes in apostolic story must find its place shortly after this period. About the time that Peter and John were sojourning in Samaria, Saul of Tarsus had been heading the persecutors in the Holy City. He had stood an onlooker and ringleader at the death of holy Stephen; and the cruel fate of that first martyr was followed, on the part of this young Pharisee, by indiscriminate cruelties on the unoffending followers of Jesus. Neither age nor sex was respected. Having vented his fury on the saints in Judea, he obtained letters from the high priest (Theophilus the Sadducee, son of Annas) to the synagogues of distant Damascus, arming him, “as chief inquisitor,” with authority to lay violent hands on those who had there espoused the Christian creed, and bring them bound to Jerusalem. In all likelihood the fiery zealot had followed the same track we have recently been describing between Jerusalem and Samaria. When Peter and John were proclaiming the glad tidings to the Samaritans, a band of horsemen, headed by the young persecutor of Tarsus, had probably swept along the narrow valley leading by Samaria to the plain of Esdraelon, — the old northern highway; little dreaming of the momentous incident which would terminate his week’s journey and transform his whole life — changing the furious bigot and persecutor, with his threatenings and slaughter, into the meek disciple and Apostle of the Lord Jesus.

It is more than probable that Peter and Saul may have previously met in other circumstances. The latter may have possibly been among the crowd of auditors in the Hall Gazith, and witnessed with suppressed indignation the calm testimony of the Bethsaidan fisherman — the untutored and unsophisticated defender of the faith which he still spurned and scorned. They could not fail, at all events, to be known to one another by public repute — the one as the rising hope of the Pharisaic sect, the other as the reputed leader of the Apostles of a crucified Messiah.

Three years subsequent to that marvellous conversion of Gamaliel’s cultured pupil, we find him, strange to say, an inmate and guest in the house of the despised fisherman. Indeed, he tells us that while he was obliged, owing to the machinations of his enemies (suspected by the Christians, and hated by the Jews), to escape from Damascus, he turned his footsteps towards Jerusalem in preference to any other place, specially for the purpose of seeing Peter. “After three years (three years after conversion) I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter” (Gal, i. 18). A well-known Father of the Church has noted that there is something peculiarly emphatic in that word “see.” It is the same that would be employed in speaking of a pilgrimage to seb some illustrious city. With the very man he had regarded with such bitter aversion, he now longs to hold confidential intercourse. His cherished wish is at first denied. Even although tidings of his conversion had doubtless reached the Church in Jerusalem

1 Chrjsostom, quoted by Dr Green, in loco. and elsewhere, still, the bold, unscrupulous persecutor was for a time shunned and discredited. They could not fail to recal the dreadful memories that clung to his past history; they had pardonable ground for using, with sarcastic misgiving, the words applied to another of his name — “Is Saul among the prophets?” The story of his marvellous change would seem too good to be true, and they cautiously waited for it being better authenticated. But a friend in need, unexpectedly but timeously, presented himself. Barnabas, well known for his liberal gifts to the Church, and better known for the loving nature which bestowed them, was said to have been a schoolfellow of the young Tarsian. As on other occasions, so now, he proved his claim to the title, “Son of Consul a tion.” Knowing more accurately the circumstances, and with a deeper and manlier sympathy, he interposed his good offices. When he saw his brethren standing coldly back, and questioning the sincerity of the strange convert, he became sponsor for his old associate. “Cyprus,” say the biographers of St Paul,” is within a few hours’ sail from Cilicia. The schools of Tarsus may naturally have attracted one who, though a Levite, was a Hellenist; and there the friendship may have begun which lasted through so many vicissitudes, till it was rudely interrupted in the dispute at Antioch. When Barnabas related how the Lord Jesus Christ had personally appeared to Saul, and had even spoken to him, and how be had boldly maintained the Christian cause in the synagogues of Damascus, then the Apostles laid aside their hesitation. Peter’s argument must have been, what it was on another occasion: ‘Forasmuch as God hath given unto him the like gift as He did unto me, who am I that I should withstand God ] 9 He and James, the Lord’s brother, the only other Apostle who was in Jerusalem at the time, gave to him ’ the right hand of fellowship.’ And he was with them, ’ coming in and going out,* more than forgiven for Christ’s sake, welcomed and be’oved as a friend and a brother.**1

The distinguished guest of Peter tells us that “he abode with him fifteen days” (Gal. L 18). Brief and parenthetical as is this statement, yet how profoundly interesting! that for a fortnight these two men were together, holding intimate and endearing fellowship on the great themes which now engrossed the minds of both, to the exclusion of all others. A vain curiosity would seek to pry into these hours of hallowed communion. Next to the great words which fell from the lips of the adorable Head of the Church, would we have prized this “cardiphonia ‘* — these heart utterances of divinest truth on the part of the two chiefest Apostles. They are, however, for wise purposes, denied to us. We can only picture hypothetically what the themes of holy thought and deliberation would be. Doubtless, rising above all, we may place the Person and work, the words and deeds, of the world’s Divine Redeemer — His beautiful life, the mystery of His sufferings, and meritorious death. Paul had only heard His voice, “Jesus, whom thou persecutest — but the other had seen Him, talked with Him, listened to His gracious discourses, and beheld His mighty works; — ay, and better still, had been, as much as the converted persecutor at his side, the subject of pardoning, forgiving love. Can we not imagine him rehearsing, as

1 Howson and Conybeare’s St Paul, toI. L p. 113. the other sat with arrested countenance and bated breath, the whole story of that forgiveness? The rash treading of the waters of Tiberias, the broken vows, the Gethsemane slumber, the coward denial, the blasphemous oaths, the base desertion? Yet all forgiven! The tender meeting after the Resurrection, and the public official reponement on the shores of Gennesaretl Then passing from these personal reminiscences to the great official commission, to “Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. “How would Paul’s soul kindle afresh at wondrous memories, coming from the lips of one who had himself beheld” the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father full of grace and truth! “May we not imagine with what similar interest would Peter listen to the dramatic tale which the former arch-persecutor had in turn to unfold 1 Perhaps anticipating Chrysostom’s remark of a future age, that the Church owes Saul’s conversion to the death of Stephen, might he not tell how the forgiving tones of that voice, and the meek, tender look of that saintly atigel-face, had lingered for days and months on his spirit? — the wondrous vision, revealed in the martyr’s death-hour, of” Jesus standing at the right hand of God % “Then the mighty crisis of his own spiritual history. He could tell his friend that he had been, though in another manner, similarly favoured as he. He could use to him the words he wrote in subsequent years,” Have not I (too) seen the Lord Jesus?” (1 Cor. ix. 1). He would in all likelihood describe that same Redeemer meeting him by the way, in the blaze of Shekinab glory eclipsing noonday splendour — not in dream, or vision, or trance, or rapture, but truly, as the words seem to imply, in visible manifestation — His glorified human nature (” appeared to me “); — that it was as really the form of the exalted Saviour he beheld, as when he who now listened to that - story of grace gazed on the same transfigured Lord on the heights of Mount Hermon- — ‘the glorified countenance, the glorified voice, gentle as the murmuring brook, yet” as the sound of many waters” — uttering in that Hebrew tongue, most appropriate to the lips of the divinely exalted Son of David, the expostulation of injured goodness, “Saul, Saul, why. persecutest thou Met” He would describe the stricken terror of his companions; the sounds confused and meaningless to them, which were to him so awful and sublime a reality, as they spoke of vain and ineffectual struggles against irresistible grace — “fighting against God! “Then the groping blindness, the isolation three days in the house of Damascus,” the dark solitary lodging,” with its faintness and exhaustion of body and strange inward conflict of soul, the birth-throes of his new being: — the emerging from the horror of great darkness, as humbled and subdued, he fell upon his knees and cried in the agony of despair to the Great Being he had so long persecuted and deemed an impostor! Then the visit of the devout Damascus Jew, — one of the very converts he had expected to bind, possibly a refugee from Jerusalem,- — the ministering angel who delivered him from his remorse and blindness, and welcomed him by the glad name of the heaven-born family — Brother. Then the baptism, not in Jordan nor in the waters of Israel, but in one of “the rivers of Damascus;” not by Peter nor by any Apostle, but by a humble lay member of the Christian brotherhood. Then the great commission, — designated “as a chosen Vessel to bear the name of Jesus before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel “(Acts ix. 15):” Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of

Christ” (Ephes. iii. 8). And, last of all, the resolution,^ in* a strength greater thau his own, to fight the gdod fight of faith until he had finished his course with joy. Thus would these two rehearse to one another the common dealings of their common Lord. “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend” (Prov. xxvii. 17). May we not add yet one other touch to the ideal picture, by imagining them commending each other in prayer: in the secrecy of that silent chambei plighting their troth to their beloved Saviour; dwelling on the means a*id method of best extending His spiritual kingdom; and, amid the certain trials which both had been warned were to overtake them, looking onwards beyond the kingdom of grace, with its “great tribulation,” to that better kingdom of glory, where, after heroically sharing in their Lord’s cross on earth, they would be admitted to be partakers of His crown? See how these two Christians love one another!

What a vast power, it has been well remarked, must that have been which could have welded together materials so unlike, antagonistic, irreconcilable: that brought the lion to associate with the lamb, the vulture with the dove, the malignant and apparently implacable foe of the meek and lowly Jesus, with his most constant earthly companion; the high-born, cultured young Pharisee, filled with the pride alike of intellect and lineage, to fraternise with the poor boatman of the Sea of Galilee I Each could whisper into the other’s ear the mystic secret, lt By the grace of God I am what I am.” They would attune their lips to the same hymn of praise, “The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.” “The Apostle Peter had witnessed wondrous miracles wrought by his Almighty Saviour. He was hims If enabled to work others no less amazing in that Saviour’s name. But did ever miracle appear to him so vast and astonishing as the change of Saul the Pharisee into Saul the Christian?... After all that he had witnessed, all that he had experienced of a Saviour’s power, must he not still have been ready to exclaim, when exchanging affectionate greetings with his brother Apostle,” What hath God wroughtl” The starting tear in the eye that had once glared so furiously upon the persecuted saint; the cordial grasp of the hand that had hurled the missile of death at holy Stephen; the fervent prayer and benediction from lips that had clamoured for the blood of Christ’s faithful ones; these must have thrilled the soul of Peter with emotions that words were inadequate to express.”1

“Fifteen days,” to quote from the same reliable authorities as in the preceding page,” passed away, and the Apostles were compelled to part. The same zeal which had caused his voice to be heard in the Hellenistic synagogues in the persecution against Stephen, now led Saul in the same synagogues to declare fearlessly his adherence to Stephen’s cause. The same fury which had caused the murder of Stephen, now brought the murderer of Stephen to the verge of assassination. Once more, as at Damascus, the Jews made a conspiracy to put Saul to death, and once more he was rescued by the anxiety

1 Lee’s Life of St Peter, p. 145, 149.

2D of the brethren. Reluctantly, and not without a direct intimation from on high, he retired from the work of preaching the Gospel in Jerusalem. As he was praying one day in the Temple, it came to pass that he fell into a trance, and in his ecstasy he saw Jesus, who spoke to him and said, “Make haste and get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, for they will not receive thy testimony concerning Me.” He hesitated to obey the command, his desire to do God’s will leading him to struggle against the hindrances of God’s providence, and the memory of Stephen which haunted hi.ii even in his trance furnishing him with an argument. But the command was more peremptory than before, “Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles.” The scene of his apostolic victories was not to be Jerusalem. For the third time it was declared to him that the fiell of his labours was among the Gentiles. This secret revelation to his soul conspired with the outward difficulties of his situation. The care of God gave the highest sanction to the anxiety of the brethren. And he suffered himself to be with drawn from the Holy City. They brought him down to Cesarea by the sea and from Cesarea they sent him to Tarsus.”1

After this, a period of remarkable and exceptional tranquillity seems to have occurred to the Church of Christ in Jerusalem. “Then,” we read, “had the churches rest throughout all Judaea, and Galilee, and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied” (Acts ix. 31). Peter employs that season of calm, and immunity from outward persecution, not

1 Howson and Oonybeare, p. 113, 114.

in an intermission of labour, but in an apostolic visitation to these surrounding churches.

Before, however, narrating the details of his pastoral tour, the question naturally occurs, was there any reason at this time for so sudden and surprising an abatement of Jewish and Pharisaic hate 1 How came the torch of persecution for the time being to be apparently quenched, and the disciples allowed a season of grateful respite, sitting under the Gospel vine and fig-tree with none to make them afraid? That rest, we may feel well assured, arose from no diminution in Jewish prejudice or of aversion to the cause and name of Jesus. There must surely have occurred one of those disturbing political crises so common in Hebrew annals, which diverted their minds from petty warfare with a religious sect, in order to protect interests of greater national and social magnitude and importance.

We have not to go far for an explanation in contemporary Roman history.

A large population of Jews mingled with Greeks in the city of Alexandria, between whom there existed a deep-seated animosity. The chronic feud in the year 39 was increased, owing to the wanton destruction by the latter of the Jewish oratories. The exasperated parties both resolved to appeal to the Emperor, and appointed accordingly three deputies to plead their respective causes. Apion, the unscrupulous Gentile advocate, adroitly succeeded in prejudicing the mind of Caligula, by representing that the Jews resolutely refused to accord to him divine honours. These, as the Csesar, he claimed and demanded. Caligula required no new arguments to stimulate and embitter his inveterate hatred for the Hebrew race and name. He gave immediate orders to Petro iius, the new governor of Syria, to have his statue erected within the Courts of the Temple of Jerusalem, accompanying the peremptory command with instructions that any opposition to his decree would be followed by a general massacre and slavery. Petronius, however personally reluctant, had no alternative but to obey the wanton instructions of his royal master; failure on his part would have been resented with swift retribution. With three legions of Roman soldiers he wintered partly at Ptolemais, partly at Tiberias. At both places, crowds of wailing suppliants came from all parts of Palestine to his camp, protesting against the sacrilege. Old, young, and middle-aged, we are told, threw themselves on the ground and implored the Yiceroy to use his intercession with the Emperor to avert the awful desecration. Meantime, as we learn from Philo and Josephus, a universal panic or rather paralysis spread over the land. All agricultural work was stopped. Fields were untiiled, and vineyards and oliveyards untended. Too well the Jewish population knew that armed resistance would be hopeless against the master of thirty legions. Their tears were their only arguments. These seem still more to have moved the heart of the iron Roman, and with a rare magnanimity he risked his own life by forwarding the appeal. The incensed Emperor, as was to be expected from his imperious nature, pronounced a capital doom on his general, which would have been speedily executed, had not the autocrat’s own death in the meantime taken place, and stayed the decree. No wonder that an occasion which goaded the nation to the madness of despair, should have purchased a temporary respite to the Christian Church from the storm which bad already burst on her. “Moreover the two great actors in the crime of crucifixion had just been removed; Pilate banished, Caiaphas deposed. Thus it was that the four years of Caius’s reign, miserable as they were to the rest of the world, brought peace to the Christians.”1

It was then, during this period of rest, that Peter “passed,” as it is expressed, “throughout all quarters,” making a pastoral round of recently formed churches between Jerusalem and Joppa. On his way by the wild mountainous tract leading past the Beth borons,2 he paused by the town of Lydda — the ancient Lud. This town is situated in the tribe of Ephraim on the great plain or “Weald “of Sharon, — that stretch of fertile country extending from the bluff of Carmel to Jaffa, washed by the blue waters of the Mediterranean to the west, and bounded by” the mountainwall of Ephraim “on the east; then probably having its rich cornfields interspersed with forests, the remains of which, according to Strabo, existed in the second century.” Eastward, the hills of Ephraim look down upon it — the huge rouuded ranges of Ebal and Gerizim towering above the rest; and at their feet the wooded cone, on the summit of which stood Samaria. But its chief fame then, as now, was for its excellence as a pasture land. Its wide undulations are sprinkled with Bedouin tents and vast flocks of sheep; the true successors of ‘the herds which were fed in Sharon’ in David’s reign

Canon Norris’s Key. p. 49.

* All travellers to Palestine who oan afford the additional day and undergo the small additional fatigue, should endeavour to approach Jerusalem from Jaffa by this route. The greater proportion adopt the shorter and easier journey by Ramleh; but they thu-< forfeit alike interesting scenery and interesting associations; and above all, lose the impressive first v.ew of Jerusalem from the height of Nebi SamueL under ‘Shittrai the Sliaronite,’ and of ’ the fold of flocks’ which Isaiah foretold in ‘Sharon ’ as the mark of the restored Israel.“1 “The whole countryside may be described as an orchard. Arabs call the plain round Lydda the garden of Palestine, and to distinguish it from the rest of this green district, it is known as the field of Sharon. Water abounds, and the heat is tropical. The loam is dark and ruddy, free from the sterile sands of the sea and the not less sterile limestone of the hills. A hardy and industrious Moslem people till the soil, and gather in the crops of grain. Few scenes in Palestine have a more perfect Arab character than the gate of Lydda, with its palms and pomegranates, its string of passing camels, its knot of Effendis smoking, and its group of girls gossiping at the well.”2 We have a peculiarly vivid remembrance of Lydda, being the first place in Palestine where we paused for “rest at noon;” not indeed veuturing within its ruined gate, as the modern huts have an evil repute, but gazing under the shade of some trees across to the picturesque ruin of the Church of St George of Cappadocia.8 This church is supposed by Pococke to have been the one erected by Justiniau to St Peter, and long afterwards (1191) to have been restored by our Richard the First, whose tents were pitched where the Bedaweens are now, and afresh dedicated to England’s reputed patron saint, who was said to have been

1 Stanley’s Sinai and Palestine, p. 258.

* Dixon, p. 413.

See the heading at the beginning of this chapter sketched on the spot. It may have been the association with the Crusaders,” but this graceful bit of ruin involuntarily r< called the picturesque nook in the ruins of Dryburgh Abbey which cover the grave of Sir Walter Scott. A similar thought seems to have occurred to another traveller. “Ton arch might belong to a part of either Furness or Glastonbury.” martyred on the spot and buried under this shrine. Indeed the town itself came to be called by the Crusaders the City of St George. The description which Volney gives applies to its present condition, “A place lately ravaged by fire and sword would have precisely the appearance of this village. From the huts of the inhabitants of the village to the serai of the Agha is one vast heap of rubbish and ruins. A weekly market, however, is held at Ludd, to which the peasants of the environs bring their spun cotton for sale. The poor Christians who dwell here, show, with great veneration, the ruins of the Church of St Peter (George 1), and make strangers sit down on a column which, as they say, the saint once rested on. They point out the place where he preached, where he prayed, &c.... The place is now a village of small houses, with nothing to distinguish it from other Moslem villages, save the ruins of the celebrated church.”1 Like most other localities in Palestine, Lydda has undergone many changes. At the time Peter visited it, there was a flourishing school under the tuition of Rabbi Gamaliel; not the Gamaliel with whom we are already familiar, but a second of the same name. Shortly after, when Jerusalem, sacked and ravaged, was rebuilding under the name of iElia Capitolina in a.d. 136, the town of Lydda became known as Diospolis or City of Jupiter —

1 “Perhaps the most singular event In its strange history was its division by Richard and Saladin into two parts, a Christian side and a Moslem side, in which it was agreed that under the protection of St George the English knight and his Saracenic foe, a foe no longer, should dwell in peace and charity with each other, the Frank being free to kneel in his church, the Arab in his mosque.... For many years after the Inst Crunader had retired from Lydda, the Christian Church was kept in repair by English funds, and when these moneys ceased to flow into Palestine, the beautiful remains were protected against waste and theft by the erection in one corner of a tiny mosque.” — Dixon. a temple to the father of heathen gods being erected there. It has later ecclesiastical associations than with the Apostle, for it was raised to bean episcopal see, and here Pelagius was summoned before fourteen bishops to answer on the charge of heresy. Dr Robinson, who gives an interesting and detailed account of the place, mentions, in connection with Peter, that a small stream outside the town still goes by his name, Abi Butrus, The Mohammedans have selected Lydda as the supposed scene of conflict between Christ and Antichrist. This Antichrist of fierce countenance is, according to these Moslem traditions, under the name of Al Dajjab, to become the scourge of the earth, and by fire and sword to attain universal dominion. The Jews of Persia are to be his special retainers; and after riding triumphant from laud to laud at the head of his martial hosts, these are to have their rendezvous under the walls of Damascus. The Christ who appeared to St Paul nigh that city, is again to descend near its principal tower or minaret, also in martial array. Rallying His saints around Him, He is to attack the fiendish usurper, scatter His embattled hosts, and drive them across the Hauran and Jordan, till they take refuge on the vast plain of Sharon, around the vast pomegranate and olive groves of Lydda. The gateway of the town is to be the spot where the two opposing leaders are to meet in mortal combat, and where, transfixed by a spear, Antichrist is to be finally destroyed. The victorious Messiah is then to march straight to the Holy City, and Jerusalem, under His benignant sway, is to become the joy of the whole earth.

i “He came down also to the saint* which 4we1t at Lydda.” The accuracy of the expression “going down” must occur to every traveller, the

A man named Eneas, confined to his couch by palsy, was sought by the Apostle. From his Greek name he would appear to have been a Hellenist — but we may conclude he was among the number of the “Saints” who had solicited a visit from Peter to this lowland town; — a humble believer in the crucified Jesus of Nazireth, acquainted with the Lord’s life of patience and resignation as well as with His death of agony; perhaps receiving strength and submission under his own affliction, from a knowledge of the meek endurance of the Prince of Sufferers.

For eight long years had this afflicted invalid been bedridden. There had been no mitigation of his symptoms. He and his friends had, doubtless, by this time surrendered all hope of permanent cure. With his faith reposed in Him who was the Conqueror of death, he may have been looking forward to the great change as a happy and joyful release from days of suffering and nights of weariness, when in the morning he said, “Would God it were evening,” and in the evening, “Would God it were morning. “He longs in his solitary chamber to see the illustrious servant of the Saviour he loved. May he not have heard of those who had, a few years before, been carried powerless as himself to the streets of Jerusalem, and whose faith had been so strong that even the shadow of Peter coming athwart their weary couches had been the signal for gladsome restoration? Might that same shadow not be blest in his case, in answer to believing prayer ] Peter at all events responds to the longings of the helpascent being gradual all the way to the plain or meadow of Sharon from the hilly capitals, alike of Samaria and Jadah. See Bib. Diet, art. “Lydda.” Also “The Holy Land,” p. 4 6, Ac. less paralytic. He draws near to the couch and utters the words, “Eneas, Jesus Christ niaketh thee whole, arise, and make thy bed, and he arose immediately.’1 Dr Kitto, with his usual discriminating knowledge of Eastern habits and customs, remarks, “The Orientals do not leave their beds laid out in the places where they sleep, except when actually in use. By day they are removed, and stowed away in places reserved fur or appropriated to them. When therefore Peter tells Eneas to ’ make his bed, he fa effect tells him to clear away his bedding, to fold it up, and take it, together with the bed itself, from the room, to place it in the usual repository. This necessarily involved the lifting and carrying the bed, though for a shorter distance. To understand it of merely readjusting the bed and bedding in the place where it stood, which is what we mean by * making 9 a bed, deprives the passage of the confirmatory force which properly belongs to it.”

We cannot wonder at the result of so signal a miracle. As in the former case of the cripple at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, there was no possibility of deception or artifice here. In a comparatively small community, Eneas and his ailment would be well known. “All that dwelt in Lydda and Saron saw him and turned to the Lord.” It was the remarkable case of a whole town and district becoming evangelised — a city like a nation “born in a day.” This spiritual conquest was, moreover, the more important from the circumstance already mentioned, that Lydda was at that time a seat of Jewish learning; so that not only the poor and illiterate, but the educated and cultured, were brought to embrace Jesus as the Messiah, and in many cases, doubtless, the learning and endowments of teachers and taught were laid at the foot of the cross. The inspired words of the Song of Songs had a significance imparted to them they never had before. The true “Rose of Sharon” was shedding His spiritual fragrance all around; and the “wilderness and the solitary place was made glad.”

The scene is now changed to the great port of Palestine, six miles south-west of Lydda.

As Joppa, the modern Jaffa, seems to have been Peter’s headquarters at this time, and has more than one interesting association with his name and doings, it may be well to bestow upon it a brief description. Being the first spot which travellers generally touch on reaching Palestine, it always retains a special place in the memory. It is, in its own striking situation, a befitting gateway, too, to the “Land of the Morning.” None who have seen it can fail to be struck with its commanding position, built on a bold conical bluff 150 feet high, crowned with a ruined Turkish castle or citadel. The houses rise tier upon tier from the water’s edge, with curiously flattened domes, — “a stony hillock,” as it has not inappropriately been called, — looking, however, more imposing from the roadstead than when the wretched modern reality comes to be inspected, with its “labyrinths of blind alleys.” Enough, however, remains to show what Joppa may, or must have been, when Solomon’s ships rode at anchor outside the dangerous reefs and shoals which guard the landing. These form a natural harbour or breakwater; yet their dangerous character must always have prevented the town from becoming, in the true sense of the word, an important and available maritime port. Puteoli and Ostia have been called the “Liverpool* of Italy; 99 but Jaffa, for the above reason, could never to the same degree have sustained a like relation to Jerusalem. Josephus more than once refers to this same unsuitability as a good haven; so that, unlike other things in Palestine, it has not been reduced to its present unsafe condition from neglect. Buckingham, in his travels, thus well describes its perilous landing, corroborating the testimony of the Jewish historian:” The port is formed by a ledge running north and south before the promontory, leaving a confined and narrow space between the rocks and the town. Here the small trading vessels of the country find shelter from the south and west winds, and land their cargoes on narrow wharves running along before the magazines. When the wind blows strong from the northward, they are obliged to warp out, and seek shelter in the small bay to the north-east of the town, as the sea breaks in here with great violence, and there is not more than three fathoms of water in the deepest part of the harbour; so accurately do the local features of the place correspond with those given, of it by Josephus.“1 Joppa formed a stronghold of the Philistines on the borders of Dan, who” remained in ships 99 (Judges v. 17). The name is taken by some from the word signifying “beauty,” fa/eh, the same word which is used in the Psalter and in the Song of Solomon to describe both Jerusalem and Tirzah. “Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King 99 (Ps. xlviii. 2). “Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with

1 It is a specimen of the wild extravagance of ancient writers, when Strabo gravely asserts that Jerusalem is visible from the h ghest part of the town. banners” (Cant. vi. 4). According to others, Joppa had a far more ancient than a Philistine pedigree. It’ was said by Pliny to have an antediluvian origin, to have been built by Japhet, the youngest son of Noah, and from him to have derived its name. So that, as a writer says, “around it lie the ashes of a hundred generations of men, Philistines, Hebrews, Macedonians, Saracens, Franks, and Turks.” It was illustrious in profane history, classical mythology having woven around it one of its boldest traditions. It was on one of these reefs of black rock, which guard its entrance, and are the terror of the mariner, on which, also according to Strabo, Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, was chained, and, when about to be devoured by a seamonster, was gallantly rescued by Perseus. Its Scriptural and sacred associations are various. Through these same reefs, Solomon’s workmen towed the vast floats of cedar trees, hewn by the Sidonians in the forests of Lebanon for his Temple; while it was from the same dangerous harbour the fugitive prophet of Nineveh embarked in the vessel bound for Tarshish, when with troubled spirit he fled from the presence of the Lord. In a later age still, it was the scene of wild tumults and cruelties during the wars of the Maccabees. Few cities have been more frequently sacked and pillaged, “five times by the Assyrians and Egyptians in their wars with the Jews, three timesr by the Romans, and twice by the Saracens in the wars of the Crusades.” 1 We may only add, that its environs are the most lovely in Palestine. Indeed, it is matter of disappointment to the traveller that there is not to be found elsewhere, in further traversing the country, a repetition of

iPrKitto. those 350 gardens, — wondrous hedges of cactus, clusters of date-palm, apricot, pomegranate, citron and orange-groves of delicious fragrance, which greet him on the outskirts of the town, and line his way for several miles on the way to Lydda and Ramleh; only surpassed, indeed, in Syria by the still more extensive “paradise” of Damascus. On its modern history we need not particularly enlarge. Like its sister town Lydda, it has undergone many changes. Its fortifications, sacked by Saladin, were reconstructed also by Richard, and vastly strengthened and extended by St Louis in the thirteenth century. A part of the walls, fifteen feet high, still remain on the side towards the sea, with towers alternately round and square, on which some old guns are mounted. These, indeed, must have been no mean fortifications, requiring, as they did, batteries to be erected against them by the French in order to be reduced. This recalls its last military memory, in connection with the First Napoleon, whose massacre of the 4000 Albanian prisoners on its sands in 1799 has affixed a lasting stigma to his name. Whatever be the misery and degradation of the modern Jaffa, no one can fail to believe that it will play a conspicuous part in the future destinies of “Palestine restored,” and modern science and enterprise may, combined, overcome the difficulties and dangers of its present rock-bound harbour.

When Peter was sojourning at Lydda, two messengers were despatched from Joppa, requesting him with all haste to come to the Jewish seaport, at the urgent desire of the disciples resident there.

l “About eight millions of oranges are grown every year in the gardens around Jaffa. Several hundreds are borne by a single tree.” — EaUward, p. 81.

A death had occurred, which had plunged the circle of believers into no ordinary grief. A member of their little company, probably one in the upper ranks of life, had fallen a victim to sickness. The deceased lady was one of those attractive specimens of Christian female character, who combined simple faith with boundless deeds of beneficence, the one. evidencing the reality and intensity of the other. She was a “disciple;” and the outcome of her discipleship was “fulness of good works and alms-deeds which she did” (Acts ix. 36). Her name, Tabitha, or Dorcas — the former Syriac, the latter Greek — signified the same thing, “gazelle,” “hind,” or “antelope.” It was a common usage, in former times, to give names to beautiful women from the more graceful of the lower animals. The “eye of the gazelle” was an especially favourite trope in oriental poetry, as descriptive of the same feature in the human countenance. From this we may probably infer, that Dorcas was possessed alike of inner and outer attractiveness; that her beautiful face was the index and exponent of those lovelier attributes of soul, which had their full expression in her deeds of charity and love.

The account of the cure of Eneas having reached Joppa, the disciples at the latter town were naturally desirous of having God’s greatest living minister and Apostle with them in their season of overwhelming bereavement. It has been made a question, whether they could have ventured to entertain any expectation of Peter’s miraculous powers being available to raise the dead. This mightiest of supernatural wonders had hitherto not been performed by the Apostles; and hence it has been by most surmised, that the simple object of the mourners at Joppa was to have the comfort of his presence; that they might have his words to sustain them in their common sorrow, if denied his deeds. The urgency of the message, however, would seem to indicate that their faith had reached a higher region, and cherished loftier expectations. The interment of the dead in Eastern countries takes place shortly after the demise; and the haste requested would almost seem to imply that they did entertain some fond hope that, ere earth was returned to earth, the scene which took place of old in the house of Jairus by the Master, might be repeated by His servant. The loss to the early Church in that Jewish seaport was so great and irreparable, that we cannot be surprised they clung fondly to the hope that “she was not dead but sleepeth.”

Peter immediately responded to the summons. When he reached the shadowed home, he found himself in the. midst of a scene of touching sadness. Some suppose he had been sent for while Dorcas was still alive, and life was “balanced in a breath.” If so, at all events now all was over; the meek spirit had departed; the soft lustre of the gazelle-like eyes had apparently fled for ever. A group of heart-broken widows were gathered around the bier. Amid weeping and wailing — the usual loud manifestations of oriental grief — they held up the garments which her hands and her alms had provided for their use, and that of their poorer and more dependent sisters — the dumb, silent tributes to her rare worth and goodness. It is evidently implied that hers was no mere tossing of redundant ostentatious gifts into the Christian treasury, but that these were hallowed and consecrated by the activities of personal beneficence. Her works and her alms-deeds went hand in hand, the one the complement of the other. Every tongue had to tell of sume ingenious deed of kindliness in response to the tale of distress; the stored gifts were doubly precious, because her own hands had made them, and her own hands bestowed them. Her beneficence, too, was doubtless ail the more remarkable and conspicuous in that age of the world; for the kindly and generous developments of a later Christianity were then unknown — those charities which have since taken the very name of this female of Joppa as their distinctive badge and description, making her the foster-mother of a thousand gracious agencies, which have put light and hope and comfort into many a darkened dwelling, many a stript and desolate heart. Hers was angels’ work indeed. True in her case was the description of the Patriarch of an earlier age, among his desert tents and rock cities: u Wheu the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me: because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy 99 (Job xxix. 11-13).

But alas! the eyes that had so often beamed with a beautiful compassion were now closed — the hands that had smoothed many a sick pillow were now powerless — the feet that hastened on many an errand of love had now sped on the last long journey — the lips that had so often whispered words of tenderness were still as the cold marble. Indigence will no longer have its unfailing response; the widow and fatherless will miss the look and the tear of sympathy, the warm grasp of the

2e band, the ever new-pleuished barrel of meal and cruse of oil.

Deeply mysterious, truly, did such a bereavement appear. Amid the many apparently useless lives around, how strange that the most cherished and valued was the one first taken! M To what purpose is this waste? 9 It was the deep mystery of the sisters of Bethany and their sorrowing friends; why the flower of fairest promise should be prematurely blighted — why the beauty of Israel should be the first to fall on the high places! If we could have imagined one home or life in Joppa exempt from the assault of death, and guarded securely by the Lord of Life, it would be hers. But she is cut down, not like a shock of corn in its season, fully ripe, in the time of harvest, but in the midst of summer suns and abounding usefulness. All has in vain been done that skilled and tender watching could do to effect restoration. “How is the staff broken and the beautiful rod!”

The mourners had apparently finished the last sad offices of affection and respect for the dead. The Taharahy or final washing of the body, had taken place; and over the bier we may imagine the usual words to have been uttered, “May she go to her appointed place in peace!” 1 But Peter, though he himself at the time knew it not, has been sent by a Greater to awake this loved sister out of sleep. The promise recorded by Israel’s Psalmist is about to receive a striking fulfilment in Gospel times: “Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him, and keep him alive, and he shall be blessed upon the earth”

i See Kitto’s “Daily Readings” inloc

PETER AT LYDDA ANI> JOPPA. 435

(Ps. xli. 1, 2). He who perhaps had come with no other thought than to “comfort them concerning their sister,” seems all at once to become conscious that he was the subject of an undefined yet divine energy. The mourners are still gathered in the upper chamber. Must not the scene have vividly recalled to the Apostle a kindred impressive spectacle, when he was one of the iprivileged “three” admitted into the house of Capernaum?’ There was, however, the notable difference, that while in the case of the latter it was the lugubrious sound of feigned minstrels which was heard, - here there was no mimic or counterfeit sorrow, but the deep reality of wounded, aching hearts. Notwithstanding this, he follows the example of his Divine Master, in requesting all present to withdraw, that he may be left alone in the presence of death. To secure perfect silence and seclusion for devout prayer, would seem to have been his main object in desiring to be thus alone — a silence which could not be attained amid the distractious of the clamorous crowd. It has been surmised also, that, possibly ignorant as to what the Divine purposes might be, he was desirous of not exciting expectations, by word or deed, that might fail of fulfilment. He followed the example of Elisha in similar circumstances, of whom it was said, “He went in therefore, and shut the door upon them twain, and prayed unto the Lord.” “There lies before him the uubreathing form, fast locked in its dreamless slumber. Almost, we think, must a feeling of regret have thrilled his soul at the thought of disturbing that peaceful repose, and calling back the released spirit to the trials and conflicts of thk troublous world,”1

Bishop Lee, 257.

Having risen from his knees in prayer, in the touching simplicity of the sacred narrative, and with a faith worthy of the Rockman, “turning him to the body, he said, Tabitha, arise!” 1

The effect was instantaneous. The eyes, which had apparently been closed in their last long sleep, again awoke, and gazed on the earnest pleader, who had wrestled like the Patriarch with a mightier than earthly angel, and, as a Prince, had power with God and prevailed. The shadow of death had been turned into the morning. The grave-clothes fettered her movements; but he gave her his hand, relieved her from her shroud, and, calling the saints and widows, presented her alive! “The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. Tbe living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day” (Isa. xxxviii. 18, 19). We can only picture the feelings of that waiting throng; the burden unexpectedly lifted off saddened hearts; the gushing tears, not of sorrow, but of joy, as the “loved and lost” had become the lost and loved again. We are told of the effect that marvellous restoration had, alike on believers and unbelievers, in Joppa and its neighbourhood. “It was known throughout all Joppa, and many believed in the Lord.”

What the future life of the restored one may have been, we can only conjecture. Can we hesitate in supposing that it was one of loftier consecration and still nobler energy,” always abounding in the work of the

l “This prayer is the essential feature by which the resurrection of Tabitha is distinguished from that of the daughter of Jairus. Jesus, without any preceding prayer, took the dead child by the hand, and recalled her to life; but Peter does not do so, until he had prayed to the Lord for this miracle.” — ioWcr.

Lord?” “Doubtless,” says Wesley, “her remaining days were still more zealously spent in the service of her Saviour and her God. Thus was a richer treasure laid up for her in heaven; and she afterwards returned to a more exceeding weight of glory than that from which so astonishing a providence had recalled her for a season. “” O Lord, Thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: Thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness; to the end that my glory may sing praise to Thee, and not be silent. O Lord, my God, I will give thanks unto Thee for ever* (Ps. xxx. 3, 11, 12).

Neither do we know anything of her second and final falling asleep. Her traditional grave is still shown in the midst of one of the gardens of the city. Nor is her name forgotten in the place of her manifold labours and beneficence. On the 25th of May there is still an anniversary kept, sacred to her memory, by the Christians of Joppa and the neighbourhood. The celebration is observed neither at her reputed house nor grave, but takes the form of a joyous festive gathering of the young, in a long day of early summer, amid the surrounding orange groves, where her virtues are extolled in simple hymns and songs.

I cannot close without referring to the attempts made by German rationalistic writers, in their persistent rejection of the supernatural, to explain away the reality of this great miracle of Peter’s. S< me consider it an unauthorised and interpolated legend. Some that it amounted to no more than awakening a patient from a long swoon, or temporary suspension of the physical powers; others that it was a mere accommodation and transposition of the parallel Gospel narrative of Jairos’ daughter, in order to give increased notoriety to Peter and his coadjutors. One eminent scholar farther suggests, as giving plausibility to this latter conjecture, the similarity between the words employed on the two similar occasions, Talitha and Tabitha. The express terms of the narrative forbid any such forced and mythical interpretations. The only fair and consistent explanation is, by giving to the words the Samaritans used regarding the sorcerer Simon a truer meaning as applied to our Apostle, “This man is the power of God, which is called great.” 1

Peter remained in the scene of this his most won* drous miracle for some time. A great and effectual door of utterance had been opened; and momentous events were at hand, for the Church of the future and of the world, in which he was to be the principal actor.

* See t)r Gloats Commentary on the Acta, with reference*.