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I. THE TRIAL THEY WERE CALLED TO ENDURE Was imprisonment and the spoliation of their property. You can all understand the misery that must attach to the violent invasion of your freedom and of your possessions. You know that such are among the heaviest sufferings of an external kind that human nature can experience; and that they require the highest degree of fortitude to sustain them with patience. But these were, in all probability, very frequent sufferings among those first disciples of Christ.

II. THE TEMPER OF MIND WITH WHICH THIS TRIAL WAS SUSTAINED. They exhibited a Christian generosity, crowned with a Divine devotion; they remembered their fellowsufferers, and forgot their own sufferings. And, what is much more remarkable, "ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods." Simply to acquiesce unmurmuring in such a dispensation of Providence as this; not to be driven by it to dissemble; not to flinch from an honourable adherence to truth; might have been thought all that could be expected of human nature. But "joyfully" to meet the severest of circumstantial distresses, rendered the more severe by its cruel injustice, this is an elevation to which Christian piety only can ascend!

III. THE PRINCIPLE WHICH CHERISHED AND MAINTAINED THIS DIVINE TEMPER: "knowing in yourselves," etc.; not taking this prospect upon probable testimony, but relying on it as a certain reality.

1. In how many respects this heavenly substance is " better" than any that is of an earthly nature.

(1) It is better, in as much as earthly substance is merely the instrument of enjoyment: while heaven is enjoyment itself, essential felicity.

(2) Again, earthly objects have no power to satisfy the mind; they cannot tranquillise the heart: on the contrary, by an unhappy, tendency, they enlarge the desires which they gratify; they inflame the passions which they indulge, nor can they ever fill the vast vacuity which they are condemned to leave in an immortal mind.

(3) Earthly treasure can only enable its possessor to surround himself with superfluous pomp, to "walk in a vain show"; it can only gratify the taste and imagination, or catch the applause of the multitude: it has no power to come into contact with the soul; none to calm the perturbations of conscience, heal the corrosions of remorse, or give comfort to the dying.

2. This is also an enduring substance. Temporal wealth is extremely transient. Lessons:(1) How much we are indebted to God for that kind of evidence of Christianity which arises from the sufferings of its first disciples!

(2) How ought we to magnify that almighty grace which enabled them to suffer!

(3) Let us apply their example for our own improvement. Piety must rise above the world in a holy superiority to its alluring pleasures.

(R. Hall. M. A.)

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KJV: But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions;

WEB: But remember the former days, in which, after you were enlightened, you endured a great struggle with sufferings;