United States or Mongolia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
There are two localities pointed out as the scene of his conversion, which, from his own account, occurred near the city. I visited a subterranean chapel claimed by the Latin monks to be the cellar of the house of Ananias, in which the Apostle was concealed.
Ananias did not wish to go at first, for he had heard of Saul before, and he had his doubts about that style of a "chosen vessel" to preach the gospel of peace. It was not the house of the disciple who sold the Master for thirty pieces of silver. I make this explanation in justice to Judas, who was a far different sort of man from the person just referred to.
I took a drink out of Ananias' well, and singularly enough, the water was just as fresh as if the well had been dug yesterday.
The unhappy Ananias naturally submitted at once to the terrible deputy, and, although Archbishop Ussher and most of the bishops defended the attacked canons, Wentworth carried his point by a sheer exercise of power. Throwing the list of canons already drawn out aside, he drew up another of his own composition, and forced the Convocation to accept it.
When first I heard this I asked innocently what it meant, and was told it was the noise of the bearers' feet coming to take away Ananias. This was considered a fine joke. During my junior year I became unpopular, and as I was very cautious, I cannot see why. At last, being hard up, I got to be foolishly reckless. But why dwell on the failures of immaturity?
Any historian who wishes to make a name has but to state that Ahab was a saint and Elijah a Philistine that Ananias was a realist and George Washington a liar that Charles I. was a Republican hampered by his official position, and that the Armada defeated Drake that Socrates died of drinking, and that hemlock was what he gave Xantippe.
Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.
We may add also, that this excess of generosity, which cast private property into the public stock, was so far from being required by the apostles, or imposed as a law of Christianity, that Peter reminds Ananias that he had been guilty, in his behaviour, of an officious and voluntary prevarication; "for whilst," says he, "thy estate remained unsold, was it not thine own?
Ananias might have rejected the suggestion of the tempter: he was not bound to yield: but he had yielded. And very suggestive of why he had fallen so low, is that other word "filled." It brings before us the quiet, gradual manner in which evil takes possession of the heart of man. We have seen already that it was so in the case of Ananias.
A flush sprang suddenly to Fleda Druse's face, then slowly faded, leaving it pale and indignant. Sharply she interrupted him. "They should have called you Ananias," she said scornfully. "My father has called you a rogue, and now I know you are one. I have not heard, but I know I know that you have had a hundred loves, and been true to none.
Word Of The Day