The missionary visit of Paul and Silas to Philippi was successful. They found an eager audience in the few Jews and proselytes who frequented the prayer-place on the banks of the Gangites. Lydia, a trader from Thyatira, was the first convert. Her whole house followed her example. It was when going and returning from Lydia's house that ' the damsel possessed with a spirit of divination' met the apostles. Paul cast out the spirit, and then those who had made a trade of the poor girl's mis fortune rose against them, and took them before the magistrates, who with all the haste and rough ness of martial law, ordered them to be scourged and thrown into prison. Even this gross act of injustice redounded in the end to the glory of God ; for the jailer and his whole house were converted, and the very magistrates were compelled to make a public apology to the apostles, and to set them at liberty, thus declaring their innocence. The scene in the prison of Philippi was one of the most cheer ing, as it was one of the most remarkable, incidents in the history of the apostolic church.
After a short interval Paul revisited Philippi, and appears to have remained in the city and sur rounding country a considerable time (Acts xx.
It would seem, as Alford says, that `the cruel treatment of the apostle at Philippi had combined with the charm of his personal fervour of affection to knit up a bond of more than ordinary love be tween him and the Philippian church. They alone, of all churches, sent subsidies to relieve his tem poral necessities' (Phil. iv. 10, 15, 18 ; 2 Cor. xi. 9 ; t Thess. ii. 2 ; Alford, Greek Test., Prol., vol. iii. p. 29). The apostle felt their kindness ; and during his imprisonment at Rome wrote to them that Epistle which is still in our canon.
Philippi is now an uninhabited ruin. The re. mains of former greatness, though still visible, are all prostrate. The foundations of a theatre can be traced ; also the walls, gates, some tombs, and nu merous broken columns and heaps of rubbish. The ruins of private dwellings are visible on every part of the site ; and at one place is a mound of rubbish covered with columns and broken fragments of white marble, where a palace, temple, or perhaps a forum once stood. (See Clarke's Travels, vol. iii. ; Leake, Northern Greece, vol. iii. ; Cousincry, Voyage dans le ; and especially Hacket's 2ourney to Philippi in Bible Union Quarterly, August 1860).—J. L. P.