The narrative of what took place at Lystra is very interesting. At first, we may presume that St. Paul preached to any chance groups that collected around him: after some time, however, he saw a poor cripple “who had never walked,” and “perceiving that he had faith to be healed,” at once cured him, saying to him with a loud voice, “Stand upright on thy feet.” Need we wonder that the astonishment of the people vented itself in the natural exclamation that “the gods had come to us in the likeness of men.” The narrative implies the existence, before the walls of the city, of a temple of Jupiter (Acts xiv. 13), some traces of which may, perhaps, still remain, and, if so, will serve, hereafter, for the identification of the site. Messrs. Conybeare and Howson have pointed out that the beautiful legend of the visit of Jupiter and Mercury to the earth, in Ovid’s story of Baucis and Philemon, belongs to this part of Asia Minor: the people of Lystra would, therefore, have been prepared to recognize in Barnabas and Paul the Jupiter and Mercury of their own fables. What was the “speech of Lycaonia” we have no means of telling, no undoubted words of this dialect having, so far as we are aware, been preserved. But the Lycaonians, though, at first, so readily convinced of the divinity of the Apostles, soon showed themselves as fickle as the “foolish Galatians.” St. Luke adding, “and there came thither certain Jews from Antioch and Iconium and persuaded the people, and having stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing that he was dead,” so little lasting was the impression produced, even by the cure of one born a cripple. It is, doubtless, to this attack upon him that St. Paul, subsequently, alludes in the words, “Once was I stoned” (2 Cor. xi. 25). That he was not killed, like St. Stephen, as Barnabas and his friends feared and the Jews hoped, is a miracle in itself. Any how, he recovered at once as “he rose up and came into the city,” and departed next day “with Barnabas to Derbe.” It was at Lystra that St. Paul made the acquaintance of Timotheus (or Timothy) his future constant and steadfast companion. With Derbe ends all that has been recorded of St. Paul’s First journey. On the return, however, of Paul and Barnabas, we learn that they fearlessly visited again all the places where they had previously preached, “confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith.” At the same time, too, they ordained “elders in every church,” praying with fasting, and commending “them to the Lord, on whom they believed.”