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The voice seemed to come from the ends of the earth, but it came from Timothy's lips. Of Lystra, Timothy, that we shall never see again nor any of the people we have ever known. We are leaving our country and our kindred. But remember, Timothy, that it is God that calls thee Homeward. And they sat talking in the soft starlight of what had befallen them when they separated in the darkness.
Nor could he have forgotten those words of the men of Lystra, 'The Gods are come down to us in the likeness of men'; and how they called 'Barnabas Jupiter', and himself Mercury, 'because he was the chief speaker. Classical mythology is full of such stories.
Paul present at the Martyrdom of S. Stephen; 2. Conversion of St. Paul; 3. The Apostle consecrating Presbyters; 4. Elymas smitten with Blindness. In the lower part of the window, 5. Sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas at Lystra; 6. St. Paul before the Elders at Jerusalem; 7. His Trial before Agrippa; 8. His Martyrdom. The five eastern windows in the Lady Chapel were designed by Mr.
At Antioch he made a complete break with the Jews and at Lystra they stoned him until they thought he was dead. From Derbe the missionaries retraced their steps except that they did not go through Cyprus on the return to Antioch. Their stay at Antioch was marked by an important church council at Jerusalem, Acts 15:1-35.
The scene at Lystra offers a striking instance of the impossibility of eliminating the miraculous element from this book. The cure of a lame man is the starting-point of the whole story. Without it the rest is motiveless and inexplicable. There can be no explosion without a train and a fuse. The miracle, and the miracle only, supplies these.
In the 14th chapter of Acts we are told the heathen at Lystra came with garlands and would have done sacrifice to Paul and Barnabas because they had cured an impotent man; but the evangelists rent their clothes and told these Lystrans that they were but men, and not to be worshipped; as if it were a great sin. And if Jesus Christ is a mere man, we are all guilty of a great sin in worshipping Him.
But these are things which it is impossible to discuss. It is related in the book of the Acts of the Apostles how wherever Paul went the Jews, moved with envy, were stirred up to persecute him. They stoned him in Iconium and Lystra, cities of Lycaonia, in spite of the wonders that he worked therein; they scourged him in Philippi of Macedonia and persecuted his brethren in Thessalonica and Berea.
The sojourn at Lystra was marked by the miraculous cure of a cripple, which so impressed the people that they took the missionaries for divinities, calling Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercury; and a priest of the city absolutely would have offered up sacrifices to the supposed deities, had he not been severely rebuked by Paul for his superstition.
A Jew's first thought on seeing a miracle was, 'by the prince of the devils'; an average Greek's or Roman's was 'sorcery'; these simple people's, like many barbarous tribes to which white men have gone with the marvels of modern science, was 'the gods have come down'; our modern superior person's, on reading of one, is 'hallucination, or 'a mistake of an excited imagination. Perhaps the cry of the multitudes at Lystra gets nearer the heart of the thing than those others.
Peter, in the house of Cornelius, said, 'Stand up! for I myself also am a man. Paul and Barnabas, when the priests brought out the oxen and garlands to the gates of Lystra, could say, 'We also are men of like passions with yourselves. But this meek Jesus lets men fall at His feet; and women wash them with their tears and wipe them with the hairs of their head; and souls stretch out maimed hands of faith, and grasp Him as their only hope.
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