The life and work of St. Paul

218 THE LIFE AND WORK O BT. PAUL.
surrounded the bleeding missionary, whose hearts glowed with amazement
and thankfulness when they saw him recover, who perhaps helped to convey
him secretly to his mother's house, and there, it may be, not only bound his
wounds, bnt also read to him in the dark and suffering hours some of the
precious words of those Scriptures in which from a child he had been trained.
But after so severe a warning it was scarcely safe to linger even for a
single day in a town where they had suffered such brutal violence. Even if
the passion of the mob had exhausted itself, the malignity of the Jews was
not so likely to bo appeased. Once more the only safety seemed to be in
flight; once more they took refuge in another province. From Lystra in
Lycaonia they started, under the grey shades of morning, while the city was
yot asleep, for the town of Derbe, 1 which was twenty miles distant, in the
district of Isaurica. It is grievous to think of one who had been so cruelly
treated forced to make his way for twenty miles with his life in his hand, and
still all battered and bleeding from the horrible attack of the day before.
But if the dark and rocky summit of Kara Dagh, the white distant snows of
3 Mount JEgaeus, and the silver expanse of the White Lake had little power
to delight his wearied eyes, or calm his agitated spirit, we may be sure that
He was with him whom once he had persecuted, but for whose sake he waa
now ready to suffer all; and that from hour to hour, as he toiled feebly and
wearily along from the cruel and fickle "
city, God's consolations increased
upon his soul with the gentleness of a sea that caresses the shore it covers."
At Derbe they were suffered to rest unmolested. It may be that the
Jews were ignorant that Paul was yet alive. That secret, pregnant with
danger to the safety of the Apostle, would bo profoundly kept by the little
band of Lystrenian disciples. At any rate, to Derbe the Jews did not follow
him with their interminable hate. The name of Derbe is omitted from the
mention of places where he reminds Timothy that he had suffered afflictions
and persecutions. His work seems to have been happy and successful,
crowned with the conversion of those disciples whom he ever regarded as
"
his hope and joy and crown of rejoicing." Here, too, he gained one more
friend in Gains of Dorbe, who afterwards accompanied him on his last visit to
Jerusalem. 3
And now that they were so near to Cybistra (the modern Eregli), through
1 It appears from the evidence of coins compared with. Dio Cass. lix. 8, that both
Derbe and Lystra, were under Antiochus IV. of Commagene (Eckhcl, iii. 255 ; Lewin,
Fasti Sacri, p. 250). If tbe inference be correct they could not, even in a political sense,
be called " Churches of Galatia."
2 The site of Derbo is still doubtful. Strabo (xii. 6) calls it a foovpiov lo-awpta?