Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/234

 course out of Palestine. Moreover, in this case, there is a particular reason why Luke would have mentioned the name of Antioch if that had been the place. What the proof of this reason is, can be best shown in his life; but the bare statement of the fact may be sufficient for the present,—that he was himself a citizen of that place, and could not have been ignorant or negligent of the circumstance of this visit, if it had occurred.

It has been suggested by others that the expression, "to another place," does not imply a departure from Jerusalem, but is perfectly reconcilable with the supposition that Peter remained concealed in some safe and unknown part of the city. This view would very unobjectionably accord with the vagueness of the passage,—since if merely another part of Jerusalem was meant, no name could be expected to describe it. But it would certainly seem like a presumptuous rashness in Peter, to risk in so idle a manner the freedom which he owed to a miraculous interposition; for the circumstance of such an interposition could not be intended to justify him in dispensing with a single precaution which would be proper and necessary after an escape in any other mode. Such is not the course of divine dealings, whether miraculous or ordinary; and in a religious as well as an economical view, the force and truth of Poor Richard's saying is undoubted,—"God helps them who help themselves;" nor is his helping them any reason why they should cease to help themselves. Peter's natural impulse, as well as a considerate prudence, then, would lead him to immediate exertions to keep the freedom so wonderfully obtained, and such an impulse and such a consideration would at once teach him that the city was no place for him, at a time when the most desperately diligent search might be expected. For as soon as his escape was discovered, Luke says, that the king "sought most earnestly for him," and in a search thus characterized, inspired too by the most furious rage at the disappointment, hardly a hole or corner of Jerusalem could have been left unransacked; so that this preservation of the apostle from pursuers so determined, would have required a continual series of miracles, fully as wonderful as that which effected his deliverance from castle Antonia. His most proper and reasonable course would then have been directly eastward from Jerusalem,—a route which would give him the shortest exit from the territories of Herod Agrippa, leading him directly into Arabia, a region that was, in another great instance hereafter mentioned, a place of comfortable and undisturbed ref