NOTES ON THE INTERNATIONAL LESSON.
By Alonzo T. Jones
Coos WAS about forty miles from Miletus, and both Coos and Miletus were only about forty miles from Patmos, where John wrote the Revelation. RHODES, the second stopping-place of Paul on this journey, was a large island below the southwest point of Asia Minor. Its principal city was also named Rhodes, and is known all over the world by the Colossus, that stood there, which is counted as one of the seven wonders of the world. Three hundred and four years B. C., Demetrius Poliorcetes besieged Rhodes, and, failing to reduce it, after a year's siege made peace with the Rhodians; and, as a token of his sincerity, he made them a present of all the machines of war that he had used in the siege. These the Rhodians sold, and with the proceeds made the famous Colossus. It was a statue of Apollo, the sun, and was one hundred and five feet tall. After standing about sixty years it was thrown down and broken to pieces by an earthquake, and there it lay, scattered about at the entrance to the harbor, when Paul entered. Thus it lay until A. D. 653, when under the caliph Moawiyah, Rhodes was subdued by the Saracens, and the fragments of the Colossus were sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa. PHENICIA lay on the coast of the Mediterranean, north of Palestine. Tyre and Sidon were its principal cities. Luke says, "Finding a ship sailing over into Phenicia, . . . we sailed into Syria and landed at Tyre." Syria and Phenicia were not identical. Syria extended to the Euphrates on the east, the Taurus Mountains on the north, Palestine on the south, and the Mediterranean on the west. Phenicia was therefore a part or province of Syria. "LANDED at Tyre." Tyre is one of the most noted cities of the Bible. It was built by a colony from Zidon (Isa. 23:12); it was a "strong city" when Canaan was divided among the ten tribes of Israel (Josh. 19:29); Hiram, king of Tyre "was ever a lover of David," and sent "cedar trees, and carpenters and masons," and built David a house (1 Kings 5:1; 2 Sam. 5:11); he also furnished Solomon with materials and workmen, in building the temple (1 Kings 5:2-18); Jezebel, the iniquitous wife of Ahab, was daughter of the king of Tyre. When Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem, Tyre rejoiced, and exclaimed, "Aha! she is broken; I shall be replenished now she is laid23waste," and because of this, Ezekiel was commanded to declare the doom of Tyre by the power of this same Nebuchadnezzar. Eze. 26. IN Ezekiel 27 we have portrayed the glory of Tyre before her fearful fall. Her builders had made her of perfect beauty. Her ships were made of fir, and their masts of cedars of Lebanon; their oars were made of the oaks of Bashan, and the seats for the oarsmen were made of ivory; the sails were made of fine linen with embroidered work, and blue and purple for coverings; the wise men of Tyre were pilots, and the wise men of Gebal were calkers; her merchants were princes, and her traders were the honorable of the earth. Isa. 23: 8. IN her fairs, there traded all nations, in all manner of merchandise. Tarshish (southern Spain) traded there in silver, and iron, and tin, and lead. Javan, Tubal, and Meshech (the coasts of the Black and Caspian Seas) traded in slaves and vessels of brass (or copper); Togarmah (Armenia) was there with horses and horsemen and mules; Dedan was there from the borders of the Persian Gulf, with ivory and ebony and precious clothes for chariots. Syria was there with emeralds, purple and broidered work, and fine linen, and coral and agate. Judah and Israel were there with wheat, and honey, and oil, and balm. Damascus came with wine of Helbon and white wool. Arabia came with bright iron, cassia, calamus, lambs, rams, and goats. Sheba and Raamah occupied in her fairs with chief of all spices, and with all precious stones, and gold. Haran, and Canneh, and Eden, and Sheba, Asshur, and Chilmad (Assyria, Chaldea, and the people about the Tigris and the Euphrates) brought all sorts of things in blue clothes and broidered work, and rich apparel in chests made of cedar and bound with cords. World's fairs are not peculiar to modern times; Tyre had them 2,500 years ago. "WE tarried there seven days." With Paul's well-known custom of reasoning with the people out of the Scriptures, it is scarcely possible that he should not dwell on the prophecies concerning Tyre. PTOLEMAIS is the Accho of Judges 1:31, and is twenty-seven miles south of Tyre. In the division of the empire of Alexander the Great, it, with the rest of Phenicia, fell to Ptolemy, from whom it received the name Ptolemais. It is now called St. Jean d'Acre, or Acre. In the Middle Ages it fell into the hands of the Saracens, and was a great bone of contention during the Crusades. In A. D. 1110 it was taken by the Crusaders; in 1187 it was retaken by the Saracens under Saladin; in 1191 it was again taken by the Crusaders under Richard Cœur de Lion, and Philip of France, at a cost of 100,000 of their troops. They gave it to the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, by whom it received the name St. Jean d'Acre, i. e., St. John of Acre. They had it for a hundred years, when the Saracens again got possession of it, after a bloody siege, in 1291. In 1517 it fell to the Turks. In 1799 it was besieged by Napoleon sixty-four days, but he could not take it. In 1831-32, in the revolt of Mehemet Ali, of Egypt, it was taken by his son, Ibrahim, after a siege of five months and twenty-one days. In 1840 the British fleet bombarded it three hours and reduced it to ruins. In 1841 the allied powers put the Turks again in possession of it. It was rebuilt, and now contains 10,000 inhabitants. CESAREA was an important place in the life of Paul. There, as says the lesson, lived Philip the evangelist; there lived, also, Cornelius, the centurion to whom the angel appeared and told him to send for Peter, and to whom Peter went and preached, when the "Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word." Acts 10. There, upon a royal throne, dressed in a garment "wholly of silver," with the bright sun shining upon him, and reflected from his silver robe, sat Herod, who had killed James, and sought to kill Peter, and delivered an oration to the people, at which they cried out that he was a god and not a man; "and immediately the angel of the Lord smote him." Acts 12. There Paul lay in prison two years, preached to Felix and Drusilla, defended himself before Festus, appealed unto Cæsar, plead before King Agrippa, and from there was sent to Rome. It is now utterly desolate and its ruins for a long time have been a quarry, from which stones are taken to build other towns in that part of Palestine. PHILIP "had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy." "He that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort." 1 Cor. 14:3. Conybeare and Howson say: "The gift of prophecy was that charism [extraordinary gift] which enabled its possessors to utter, with the authority of inspiration, divine strains of warning, exhortation, encouragement, or rebuke, and to teach and enforce the truths of Christianity with supernatural energy and effect."—Life of Paul. "And God hath set some in the church." 1 Cor. 12:28. In the last days, the remnant of the church "keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ;" and "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." Rev. 12:17; 19:10. Therefore, "Despise not prophesyings." 1 Thess. 5:21.