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The application of these words to present day life is a task that might be assigned to a child. Demetrius never dies; his word is to be heard in every tongue; he is present in great force in every Church, as representing two special phases of life. With the subtlety of selfishness he puts the case with comical adroitness. He knows the value of a little piety. If it were a mere matter of trade, he could have lifted his noble self above all market place considerations, but "that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised" was the thought that afflicted his pious heart.

I. WHAT WAS THE REALITY OF THE CASE FROM THE FIRST POINT OF VIEW? Trade was injured. If Paul had preached abstract ideas, Demetrius would have made shrines for him if he had ordered them, but a preacher that thunders upon immediate iniquity may get himself into trouble. Modern preachers might preach a whole year upon the evils of intemperance, but if those who deal in strong drink were to find their takings going down the preacher would soon hear of the circumstance. You may circulate what books you please, but if the literature that is eating out the morality of our young people is arrested in its baleful progress, then you will be caricatured, contemned, laughed at. Rejoice when such persecution befalls you. It is a sign of true success. Demetrius will not fail to let you know how your work is going on. But press on — another stroke, another rush, and down goes Demetrius, and all his progeny fall into the pit to keep him profitless company. What bad journal have you, as a Christian Church, ever shut up? What place of iniquitous business have you ever bought and washed, and within its unholy walls set up the altar of Christ? Where do you follow and outbid Demetrius, driving him back? We are afraid to build churches too near one another; we study one another's feelings about that. Show me the thoroughfare in any great city in which Christian churches have pushed back evil institutions — back to the river's edge, and into the river, if possible. To see such a city would be to see the beginning of heaven.

II. THE NEXT PHASE OF THE CASE AS PUT BY DEMETRIUS IS INFINITELY MORE HUMILIATING. The temple of the great goddess Diana is in danger. That particular phase of the situation is best represented by the words "a religious panic." The temple was in danger. That is the language of today. If it is a temple that can be put in danger, it is a temple made with hands, and must go down. Hear the great challenge of the Master: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." What panics we have seen! As if truth could ever be in danger! Some time ago a number of highly learned men issued a volume entitled "Essays and Reviews." It was the doom of Christianity! And yet Christianity has gone forward on her beneficent career without ever having bought a copy of the volume that some people earnestly thought was to have taken her life. We ought to have a religion that cannot be put in danger. If our religion is an affair of letters, forms, dates, autographs, then I do not wonder that our cabinet is sometimes broken into. I do not keep my religion in a museum, or lock it up in an iron safe; my conception of God no man can break through nor steal. You cannot take my Bible from me; if you could prove that the Apostle John wrote the Pentateuch, and that Moses wrote the Apocalypse, and that the Apocalypse should come in the middle of the Bible, you have not touched what I hold to be the revelation of God to the human heart. What we, as the common people, have to be sure about is, that God has sent great messages of law and love and light and life to everyone of us; that God's revelations do not depend upon changing grammars, but upon an inward, spiritual consciousness and holy sympathy. Whose insight is not intellectual but moral — the purity of heart which sees God. The Bible speaks to my own heart as no other book speaks. It proves its own inspiration by its grasp of human life, by its answers to human need. The town clerk laid down the principle that ought to guide us (ver. 36). The brevity of life, the certainty of death, the reality of sin, the present hell that burns me, the need of a Saviour — these things cannot be "spoken against"; therefore, those of us who feel them to be true "ought to be quiet."

(J. Parker, D. D.)

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KJV: For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen;

WEB: For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the craftsmen,