In the faithful and steady confidence that they were soon to receive, according to the promise of their risen Lord, some new and remarkable gift from above, which was to be to them at once the seal of their divine commission, and their most important equipment for their new duties, the apostles waited in Jerusalem until the great Jewish feast of the pentecost. This feast is so named from a Greek word meaning “_fiftieth_,” because it always came on the fiftieth day after the day of the passover feast. Jesus had finally disappeared from his disciples about forty days after his resurrection,――that is forty-two days after the great day of the passover, which will leave just one week for the time which passed between the ascension and the day of pentecost. These seven days the apostolic assembly had passed in such pursuits as might form the best preparation for the great event they were expecting. Assembled in their sacred chamber, they occupied themselves in prayer and exhortation. At length the great feast arrived, on which the Jews, according to the special command of Moses, commemorated the day, on which of old God gave the law to their fathers, on Mount Sinai, amid thunder and lightning. On this festal occasion, great numbers of Jews who had settled in different remote parts of the world, were in the habit of coming back to their father-land, and their holy city, to renew their devotion in the one great temple of their ancient faith, there to offer up the sacrifices of gratitude to their fathers’ God, who had prospered them even in strange lands among the heathen. The Jews were then, as now, a wandering, colonizing people wherever they went, yet remained perfectly distinct in manners, dress and religion, never mixing in marriage with the people among whom they dwelt, but every where bringing up a true Israelitish race, to worship the God of Abraham with a pure religion, uncontaminated by the idolatries around them. There was hardly any part of the world, where Roman conquest had planted its golden eagles, to which Jewish mercantile enterprise did not also push its adventurous way, in the steady pursuit of gainful traffic. The three grand divisions of the world swarmed with these faithful followers of the true law of God, and from the remotest regions, each year, gathered a fresh host of pilgrims, who came from afar, many for the first time, to worship the God of their fathers in their fathers’ land. Amid this fast gathering throng, the feeble band of the apostles, unknown and unnoticed, were assembled in their usual place of meeting, and employed in their usual devout occupations. Not merely the twelve, but all the friends of Christ in Jerusalem, to the number of one hundred and twenty, were here awaiting, in prayer, the long promised Comforter from the Father. All of a sudden, the sound of a mighty wind, rushing upon the building, roared around them, and filled the apartments with its appalling noise, rousing them