Bodily labour and even suffering are sometimes felt to be less oppressive than mental anxiety and care. The Apostle Paul was familiar with all alike; and in his case a peculiarly sensitive and sympathetic nature caused him to feel more keenly and constantly than others might have done the pressure of daily anxiety for the welfare of the converts he had made and the Churches he had founded.

I. THE REASONS FOR ANXIETY WITH REGARD TO THE CHURCHES.

1. Their immaturity. They had been in existence but a few years, and were subject to the natural disadvantages of youth and inexperience. They needed diligent watching and tender, fostering care.

2. Their exposure to the insidious efforts of false teachers. Some of these sought to lead the Christians of the first age back into Judaism, others strove to introduce licence and lawlessness.

3. Their constantly recurring needs. Some needed the visits of evangelists or the appointment of pastors. Others needed the instructions or counsels which circumstances might render appropriate.

II. THE PRACTICAL PROMPTINGS OF APOSTOLIC ANXIETY. We see the evidences of Paul's sincere solicitude for the Churches in:

1. His frequent visits, by which he brought his personal influence to bear upon those whose welfare he sought and who naturally looked to him for help.

2. His Epistles, full of clear statement, convincing reasoning, earnest persuasion, and faithful warning.

3. His selection and appointment of devoted fellow labourers to assist him in the superintendence and edification of the youthful communities.

4. His fervent prayers, which abounded on behalf of all in whose spiritual well being he was interested.

III. THE PROFITABLE LESSONS OF APOSTOLIC ANXIETY.

1. A general lesson of mutual interest and sympathy. Who can read this language without feeling to what an extent it enforces the scriptural precept? - "Look not every man upon his own things, but every man also upon the things of others."

2. A special lesson of mutual helpfulness as the duty and privilege of all who occupy positions of influence and authority in Christ's Church. Some forms of Church government tend rather to isolate Christian communities than to draw them together. This tendency may be happily counteracted by compliance with the precept implicitly contained in this declaration of the apostle. - T.

St. Paul, with all his gifts and all his triumphs as an apostle of Christ, led a life of constant trial. There was one very peculiar trial to which he was subjected, that of constant disparagement. Scarcely had he planted the Church at Corinth than another came after him to mar his work. One or two obvious remarks suggest themselves.

I. AND ONE IS AS TO THE CHARACTER OF THE SCRIPTURES GENERALLY, IN REFERENCE TO THEIR DETAILS OF FACTS. All the books of Scriptures are of what is called an incidental character. The Gospels were not written to give a complete life of Jesus. And in like manner the history in the Acts was not written to give a complete life of each of the apostles, not even of the two apostles principally spoken of, St. Paul and St. Peter. In each case specimens of the life are given, enough to exemplify the character and the history of the first disciples, by illustrating the principles on which a Christian should act, and the sort of help and support from above which he may look for in so acting.

II. Another remark, not wholly unconnected with this, is AS TO THE STYLE AND GENERAL CHARACTER OF THIS PARTICULAR PASSAGE AND ITS CONTEXT. "Ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise." It is what we call ironical language. And there is very much of this tone in these chapters. I would beg you to notice what a very natural person St. Paul was; how he expressed strongly what he strongly felt; how he did not allow a misplaced or morbid charity to keep him from exposing, as any human writer would seek to do, the fraudulent designs and underhand practices of those whose influence over a congregation he saw to be full of danger.

III. BUT I MUST DRAW MY THIRD REMARK FROM THE TEXT ITSELF, AND THUS PREPARE THE WAY FOR ITS BRIEF CONCLUDING ENFORCEMENT. St. Paul says, "If I must needs glory, I will glory in the things which concern my infirmities." I fear these words have been sometimes much misapplied. People have spoken of glorying in their infirmities. They have applied the words, all but avowedly, to infirmities of temper and of character, as though it gave them some claim to the estimation of Christians to be aware of their own liability to sudden outbreaks or habitual unsoundness of prevailing evil within. But now observe the three things to which St. Paul applies the term of infirmity or weakness.

1. The first of these is suffering — suffering for Christ's sake, suffering of a most painful kind and a most frequent repetition — bodily discomfort, bodily privation, bodily pain. Such was one part of his "infirmity." Suffering reminded him of his human nature, of his material frame not yet redeemed by resurrection.

2. The second kind of infirmity is denoted in these words, "that which crowds upon me daily, the anxiety of all the congregations." A keen sense of responsibility is his second weakness. He knew so much in himself, he had seen so much in others, of the malice and skill of the tempter, that when he was absent from a congregation, and more especially from a young congregation busy in the formation or in the charge of distant Churches, he was distracted with painful care, and even faith itself was not enough sometimes to soothe and reassure him. He called this anxiety an infirmity. Perhaps, in the very highest view of all, it was so. Perhaps he ought to have been able to trust his congregation in God's hands in his absence.

3. There was a third weakness, growing out of the last named, and that was the weakness of a most acute sympathy. "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not?" That is, whenever I notice or hear of a weakness in the faith of any one, such a weakness as exposes him to the risk of failing in his Christian course, I have a sense of interest and concern in that case such as makes me a very partaker in its anxieties. I cannot get rid of it by putting it from me. I feel that weakness of character as my weakness; I feel that weakness of faith as my weakness. That is one half of my sympathy. But there is, along with this, another feeling, "who is offended?" who is caused to stumble? who is tempted to sin? and I am not on fire with righteous indignation against the wickedness which is doing this work upon him? Sympathy with the tempted is also indignation against the tempter. Sympathy has two offices. Towards the offended it is fellow weakness; towards the offender it is indignant strength. I have dwelt upon these things for the sake of putting very seriously before you the contrast between St. Paul's weaknesses and our own. Our own infirmities are of a kind which a severer judge than we are of ourselves would certainly designate by the plainer names of defects, faults, and sins — indolence, carelessness, vanity, a desire for applause, a sensitiveness to ether men's opinions of us. Compared with such things, how withering to our self-love must be St. Paul's (so-called) weaknesses! The very least of them is a virtue beyond our highest attainments. Which of us ever suffered anything in Christ's behalf? Where is our sense of responsibility? — our anxiety about those committed to us?

4. Finally, I would give a wider scope to the language of the text, and urge upon each one the duty and the happiness of saying to himself in the words of St. Paul, "If I must needs glory, I will glory in those things which concern," not my strength, but "my weakness." The things on which we commonly pride ourselves are our advantages, our talents, our estimation with others, our position in society, the pleasures we can command, or the wealth we have accumulated. But these things, by their very nature, are the possession of the few. St. Paul tells us how we may glory safely, how we may glory to the very end. Glory, he says, not in your strength, but in your weakness. Has God denied to you His gift of health? Has He seen fit by His providence to impair any one of your bodily organs — your sight, your hearing, your enjoyment of taste, or your power of motion? Or have you been treated with neglect by some one to whom you had shown only kindness? Has the poison of disappointment entered your heart? It is just in these very things, or in any one of them, that St. Paul would have you glory. For God's gifts to us we may be thankful, but it is in His deprivations alone that we may glory. And St. Paul tells us why we may thus glory in our disadvantages, in our postponements, in our losses, in our bereavements. He says in another passage of this same Epistle, "Most gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest (tabernacle) upon me." And he speaks yet again in the same spirit "of bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus," being made like Him, that is, in His humiliation and in His death for us, "that the life also of Jesus," His living power as it is now put forth in His servants, "might be made manifest in our body." It is the dark side of life which brings us most closely, most consciously into connection with the supporting and comforting help of Christ within.

(Dean Vaughan.)

What a glorious appeal is this of St. Paul; the very spirit of holy truth breathes in it. It was an appeal which none but an entirely honest and faithful man would make to the One knowing all things, to judge the single truthfulness of his whole speech. We think, at first sight, what a convincing, triumphant appeal these words must have been to all that heard them. But as we dwell upon them a second thought rises up in our minds, "what a comfort and stay the consciousness of this must have been to him who could honestly say so much to himself." What ease and peace and comfort, yes, and what power and vigour as well, must there have been there. Look only at the other side of the case, at the miserable condition of the untruthful, self-deceiving, double-faced heart. Think of the many discomforts, miseries of a heart that does not mean to seek the truth; think how such a heart would stand to other hearts; think, for instance, of all the wretched, uneasy fear of being found out. I do not mean only found out in telling lies, but in all the deceitfulness, the double dealing of a hollow, insincere heart. How can there be any groundwork of real and abiding affection where one is hiding his real thoughts from the other, or not even acknowledging to himself what he really feels? You know well how we draw towards the open, frank man who seems to speak from the heart. Here, then, is the first discomfort of an untruthful heart, that it is estranged from those to whom it ought to be most warmly attached, that it fears those it ought to love. Is this all? No, nor the greater part. There is one other with whom a man may be untruthful, himself. It may be our chief life occupation to carry on a long deceit of ourselves, sometimes knowing the better part and choosing the worse, sometimes blindfolding ourselves, so as to hinder ourselves from seeing what is the right way. Our Lord speaks of the helplessness of a house divided against itself. How can that be otherwise, when a man is actually divided against himself, and one half sets itself to deceive the other? Now, I ask, can there be any real peace of truth in a heart so divided? Can it be possible for such a heart to feel comfortable? But there lies deeper mischief still, greater discomfort from the rule of untruthfulness, insincerity, deceit in the heart. God is the king of the conscience, and the rule of right and truth is the law of His kingdom. Where, then, we are not thinking and living by rule, where we are dealing untruthfully with ourselves, we must be dealing also untruthfully with God, either doing what we like, without seeking to know His will, or, which is perhaps more common, seeking to find a loophole in His Word through which we can creep and have our own way, heaping up all sorts of weak excuses, false arguments, pretences of many kinds, under which we smother the plain meaning of the known Word of God, "handling the Word of God deceitfully," and "changing the truth of God into a lie." Can there be any comfort in this forced reign of untruth? Can there be any ease or real peace? Happy the man who escapes all this; happy the man who, by the grace of God, has set up the simple law of truth in his heart, who seeks only the truth, "for the truth shall make him free, and freedom will be happiness. He has but one rule, to deal honestly with himself, his neighbour, and his God. If he is open with God, God will be open with him, and the everlasting truth shall be his stay and joy, and exceeding great reward.

(Archdeacon Mildmay.)

I. THAT THE EMINENTLY GOOD ARE SPECIALLY EXPOSED TO DANGER.

1. Because of the ability which they display in destroying evil (ver. 22). The genius, culture, sagacity, and resolution of Paul. The tallest trees are most exposed to the tempest. Mountain summits rear themselves to the heights where lightnings are kindled and thunderbolts are forged.

2. Because of the influence which they exercise. The presence of Napoleon electrified his troops. The leading of the gifted good multiplies the power of Christians in general.

3. Because of the success which they realise. The conversion of Paul was a revival. "Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea 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." Luther paralysed the papacy.

II. THAT THE EMINENTLY GOOD ARE SOMETIMES EXPOSED TO VERY FORMIDABLE DANGERS (ver. 32). The governor of Damascus, instigated by the Jews, surrounded the city with soldiers to secure the apprehension and assassination of Paul.

1. The danger was powerful in its instrumentality. Church and State combined to crush Paul. Antichrist and assassination are synonymous.

2. The danger was skilful in its contrivance. The city was entirely surrounded with guards. The arrangement seemed admirably suited to the purpose — deliverance was hopeless. Sagacity, to a degree, and sin have been linked together from the days of Paradise Lost. Talent has been prostituted ever and everywhere.

3. The danger was destructive in its design. "To kill him." If the teacher is slain the truth will survive.

III. THAT THE EMINENTLY GOOD ARE SOMETIMES VERY SIMPLY DELIVERED OUT OF DANGER (ver. 3). The enemy was baffled by a basket.

1. The escape was novel in its method. "And through a window in a basket was I let down by the wall." Windows have often done service to the faithful. Baskets also have been friends in need. Necessity was the mother of invention.

2. It was unexpected in its adoption. The gates of the city were watched. They had not reckoned upon the window superseding the door.

3. It was justifiable in its principle. An act of policy is right if principle is not sacrificed.

4. It was complete in its success. "And I escaped his hands." The secret disappearance through the window was a momentary retreat which led to endless victories. Every man is immortal until his work is done. Peter delivered from prison.Lessons:

1. The value of a true worker for Christ. Paul. "Ye are the salt," etc. "Ye are the light," etc.

2. The world's ignorance of its best friends. It has invariably persecuted the truest philanthropists.

3. The dependence of the great upon inferiors.

4. The ultimate defeat of sin.

5. The over-ruling power of Divine Providence.

(B. D. Johns.)

1. His name is unknown at present. Future researches may reveal it. His master, Aretas or Hareth, was Emir of Petra and father-in-law of Herod the Great. When the latter turned away from his lawful wife and took Herodias, Aretas, to avenge the insult, seized Damascus, and placed a strong man over the city and its garrison. Paul may have met this governor, and have spoken as plainly to him as afterwards to Felix. He certainly proclaimed the gospel with power, and put to confusion the Jews. They in their deadly malignity planned to get rid of him, and seem to have won the Ethnarch over to their plan. By the way, however, in which the account is given, we should infer that the commandant was himself the subject of an unreasoning prejudice. He had a fixed purpose, and in every way he sought to carry it into effect. He had the gateways carefully watched by day and night, and intended to make short work with the apostle. A bowstring or sword-slash should quench his fiery earnestness and cut short his heretical teachings.

2. Paul was evidently in great danger, and he knew it. He must remain in hiding as long as possible. This would be trying to a restless, energetic man like him. He must attempt something. He is like many at this day who are harassed and see no opening. Every avenue of escape from temptation seems closed on the one hand, or of usefulness on the other. We doubt not that Paul had recourse to God in prayer. He would act as well. The Christians also are anxious. One friendly to him has a suggestion to make. The window of his house is in the wall of defence, and he can borrow a basket and a rope from a neighbour. Why should not the apostle escape thereby? Ah, the idea is a good one. Thanks many are expressed, and when the night is dark the great apostle of the Gentiles crouches in the creaking basket, and is lowered down. Possibly, instead of a wicker basket, something more silent, a strong net-like basket of rope, one like those ofttimes slung over the camels with fuel or food, was found.

3. Paul can breathe now. The period of intense anxiety made a deep impression upon him, and he refers to it as one of the pivotal points in his life. The man who "kept the city" could not keep all in his power. There was a greater than himself whom he had not taken into account.

I. GOD CAN ALWAYS FIND A WAY OF ESCAPE FOR HIS SERVANTS. He is never baffled, although we are constantly. His help comes in the most unexpected manner, and at the extremest point of our needs. Thus Peter found it when shut in prison and the gates were opened by the angel. Thus Daniel found it when God shut the lions' mouths. Thus Jeremiah found it when an Ethiopian eunuch was moved to draw him up out of the miry prison. Thus the Israelites found it when, the foe behind and the sea before, they cried unto God and received the command, "Go forward." And thus many of God's servants have found deliverance — Wyclif when John of Gaunt stood by him, Luther when the Elector Frederick shielded him. Thus God has His window and basket for men now who put their trust in Him — one that will just fit them. He knows where to find it and when to bring it out. Trust Him. An old basket and half-worn rope becomes the salvation of an apostle, and the Cross of shame and torture the sign of the redemption of the world.

II. THE WAY OF GOD'S DELIVERANCES IS SOMETIMES HUMILIATING TO THE CARNAL NATURE. We can imagine that when Paul first looked at that basket he would shrink from creeping into it. Shall he who had sat at the feet of Gamaliel, he who was conscious of great ability to rule, have to submit to such humiliation? So it may seem repugnant to some to be saved simply by faith in a crucified Saviour. We like not to be reduced to depend on another. We have no objection to admire Christ, to attach ourselves to Him as to a great leader, or as an inspiriting example of self-sacrifice, but the Cross is still to some a stumbling-block.

III. WHEN A SPIRIT ESCAPES FROM ITS SLAVERY TO EVIL HABITS WE CAN IMAGINE HOW THE ARCHENEMY OF SOULS WILL GNASH WITH ANGER. The Ethnarch was foiled. Herod was foiled when the wise men went not back to tell where the Christ was born. Pharisees were foiled when the officers they sent to take Christ came back and said, "Never man spake like this man." The forty men who bound themselves under an oath not to eat or drink until they had killed Paul were foiled by the son of Paul's sister, who carried the report to the Roman officers; and the governor of Damascus would doubtless rage when his officers said that Paul had escaped and was preaching in another city. "Foiled, foiled by that Paul!" Thus will the evil one be foiled in respect to those who trust in the work of the Crucified One, and humble themselves under the mighty hand of God. Thus, too, will all the opposition of the world to the truth of God be foiled. Attempts to suppress God's truth will eventually only lead to louder praise and a more telling triumph.

IV. WE CAN IMAGINE, HOW GREAT WOULD BE THE APOSTLE'S GRATITUDE; and what will not be the depth of our thankfulness when we find we have been for ever delivered from temptation and sin! The God who foiled the Ethnarch and set Paul free can deliver us now and eternally.

(F. Hastings.)

(text, and Acts 9:24, 25): — This incident is mentioned by Paul in a curious manner. He appears to be about to give a history (ver. 30) of "the things that concern mine infirmities." The escape is thereupon narrated in a sharply detailed manner. And next he says, "It is not expedient for me doubtless (then) to glory." It was a ridiculous, humiliating circumstance; most men would have concealed it. Of such odd things the religion of Jesus can make splendid use.

I. IT WAS AN INSTANCE OF PECULIAR DISCIPLINE. That there was something in Paul requiring to be thus dealt with we may be certain — an over-sensitiveness that might occasionally make him a trouble to himself and others; a deep-rooted feeling of personal dignity and Jewish pride. In such ways we get the "starch" taken out of us. Of the stiff but brittle Pharisee God was making a keen and flexible weapon. Many would have hesitated to avail themselves of such a means of escape. It tended to make the fugitive ridiculous. It might even be considered destructive of his authority and usefulness. Anything that stands in the way of God's service will He in like manner remove.

II. IT WAS A TEST OF THE FAITH OF THE DISCIPLES. There are many who cannot receive the truth apart from extraneous and meretricious recommendation. Moral influence is with them inextricably bound up with personal position and external dignity, etc. It is surprising how very few are able to receive the truth for its own worth. Yet a humble exterior is no proof of real lowering. Splendour may cloak corruption and spiritual death. One might fancy the Damascene Christians exclaiming inwardly, "Where is the miracle, the sign?" So here Paul banters the Corinthians — I am a fool, "bear with me." With men God ever pursues this separative process, dissolving the temporal and accidental elements from the essential and eternal in His Word.

III. IT WAS A SPECIMEN OF THE IRONY OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE. In certain historical events one seems to detect such a mood. Especially in the more critical moments in the history of nations, churches, etc., does it betray itself. The means of checkmating the moves of the adversary of souls are reduced to a minimum — a ridiculous, preposterous circumstance, but it is sufficient. And when one compares, as he cannot but do, the huge preparations and complex machinery of Satan, with the simplicity and external meanness of the Divine instrumentality, the power and wisdom of God stand forth the more sheer and absolute. Because we feel the battle stern and long and difficult we find it hard to conceive of it being otherwise with God and higher intelligences. But there are traces of contempt for Satan in the Bible.

(A. F. Muir, M. A.)

Observe —

I. ON WHAT A SMALL TENURE GREAT RESULTS HANG. The ropemaker had no idea how much depended on the strength of his workmanship. How if that rope had broken and the apostolic life had been dashed out? On that one rope how much depended! So it has been ever and again. What ship of many thousand tons ever had so important a personage as once was in a small boat of papyrus on the Nile? How if some crocodile had crunched it? The parsonage at Epworth took fire, and seven of the children were safe, but the eighth was in the consuming building. How much depended on that ladder of peasant shoulders ask the millions of Methodists on both sides the sea, ask the hundreds of thousands of people who have already joined their founder. An English vessel put in at Pitcairn Island, and found right amid the surroundings of cannibalism and squalor a Christian colony with schools and churches. Where did it come from? Missionaries had never landed there. Sixty years before a vessel on the sea was in disaster, and a sailor, finding that he could save nothing else, went to a trunk and took out the Bible which his mother gave him, and swam ashore with the book between his teeth. That book was read and re-read until the heathen were evangelised. There are no insignificances in our lives. The minutiae make up the magnitude. If you make a rope make it stout, for you do not know how much may depend upon your workmanship.

II. UNRECOGNISED SERVICE. Who are those people holding that rope? Who tied it to the basket? Who steadied the apostle as he stepped in? Their names have not come to us, and yet the work they did eclipses all that was done that day in Damascus and the round world over. Are there not unrecognised influences at work in your life? Is there not a cord reaching from some American, Scottish, or Irish, or English home, some cord of influence that has held you right when you would have gone astray, or pulled you back when you had made a crooked track? It may be a rope thirty years long, three thousand miles long, and the hands may have gone out of mortal sight; but they held the rope! One of the glad excitements of heaven will be to hunt up those people who did good work on earth but never got any credit for it. If others do not make us acquainted with them God will take us through. Come, let us go around and look at the circuit of brilliant thrones. Why, those people must have done something very wonderful on earth. "Who art thou, mighty one of heaven?" Answer: "I was by choice the unmarried daughter that stayed at home to take care of father and mother in their old days." "Is that all?" "That is all." Pass along. "Who art thou?" "I was for thirty years an invalid. I wrote letters of condolence to those whom I thought were worse off than I. I sometimes was well enough to make a garment for the poor family on the back lane." "Is that all?" "That is all." Pass further along. "Who art thou?" "I was a mother who brought up a large family of children for God. Some of them are Christian mechanics, some are Christian merchants, some are Christian wives." "Is that all? .... That is all." Pass along a little further. "Who art thou?" "I had a Sabbath school class on earth, and I had them on my heart until they all came into the kingdom of God, and now I am waiting for them." "Is that all?" "That is all." Pass a little further along the circuit of thrones. "Who art thou, mighty one of heaven?" "In time of bitter persecution I owned a house in Damascus, and the balcony reached over the wall, and a minister who preached Christ was pursued, and I hid him away from the assassins, and when I could no more seclude him I told him to fly for his life, and in a basket this maltreated one was let down over the wall, and I was one who helped hold the rope."

III. HENCEFORTH CONSIDER NOTHING UNIMPORTANT THAT YOU ARE CALLED TO DO, IF IT BE ONLY TO HOLD A ROPE. A Cunard steamer had splendid equipment, but in putting up a stove in the pilot house a nail was driven too near the compass. The ship's officer, deceived by that distracted compass, put the ship two hundred miles off the right course. One night the man on the look-out shouted, "Land, ho! "within a few rods of demolition on Nantucket shoals. A sixpenny nail came near wrecking a Cunarder. Small ropes hold great destinies. In 1871 a minister in Boston sat by his table writing. He could not get the right word, and he put his hands behind his head and tilted back the chair, trying to recall that word, when the ceiling fell and crushed the desk over which a moment before he had been leaning. A missionary in Jamaica was kept by the light of an insect called a candle fly from stepping off a precipice a hundred feet. F.W. Robertson declared that he was brought into the ministry through a train of circumstances started by the barking of a dog. If the wind had blown one way the Spanish Inquisition would have been established in England. Nothing unimportant in your life or mine. Place six noughts on the right side of the figure "1," and you have a million. Place our nothingness on the right side, and you have augmentation illimitable; but be sure you are on the right side.

(T. De Witt Talmage, D. D.).