Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/525

 in a loud voice, "Rise, and stand on thy feet." instantly the man sprang up, and walked. When the people saw this amazing and palpable miracle, they cried out, in their Lycaonian dialect, "The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men." Struck with this notion, they immediately sought to designate the individual deities who had thus honored the city of Lystra with their presence; and at once recognized in the stately form, and solemn, silent majesty of Barnabas, the awful front of, the Father of all the gods; and as for the lively, mercurial person attending upon him, and acting, on all occasions, as the spokesman, with such vivid, burning eloquence,—who could he be but the attendant and agent of Jupiter,, the god of eloquence and of travelers? Full of this conceit, and anxious to testify their devout sense of this condescension, the citizens bustled about, and with no small parade brought out a solemn sacrificial procession, with oxen and garlands, headed by the priests of Jupiter, and were proceeding to offer a sacrifice in solemn form to the divine personages who had thus veiled their dignity in human shape, when the apostles, horror-struck at this degrading exhibition of the idolatrous spirit against which they were warring, and without a single sensation of pride or gratitude for this great compliment done them, ran in among the people, rending their clothes in the significant and fantastic gesture of true Orientals, and cried out with great earnestness, "Sirs! what do you mean? We also are men of like constitutions with yourselves, and we preach to you with the express intent that you should turn from these follies to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea, and all that is in them.—He, indeed, in times past, left all nations to walk in their own ways. Yet he left himself not wholly without witness of his being and goodness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." With these words of splendid eloquence and magnificent conception bursting from their lips in the inspiration of the moment,—the apostles, with no small ado, stopped the idolatrous folly of the Lystrans, who probably felt and looked very silly, when the mistake into which they had been drawn by a mere mob-cry, was shown to them. Indignant, not so much at themselves, who alone were truly blamable for the error, as against the persons who were the nobly innocent occasions of it,—they were in a state of feeling to overbalance this piece of extravagance by another,—much more wicked, because it was not