_The shadow of Peter._――This is one of a vast number of passages which show that high and perfectly commanding pre-eminence of this apostolic chief. The people evidently considered Peter as concentrating all the divine and miraculous power in his own person, and had no idea at all of obtaining benefit from anything that the minor apostles could do. In him, alone, they saw the manifestations of divine power and authority;――he spoke and preached and healed, and judged and doomed, while the rest had nothing to do but assent and aid. Peter, then, _was_ THE great pastor of the church, and it is every way desirable that over-zealous Protestants would find some better reason for opposing so palpable a fact, than simply that Papists support it. THEIR SECOND SEIZURE AND TRIAL. The triumphant progress of the new sect, however, was not unnoticed by those who had already taken so decided a stand against it. The Sadducees, who had so lately come out against them, were not yet disposed to leave the apostles to enjoy their boldness with impunity. The high priest Annas, who had always been the determined enemy of Christ, belonging to the Sadducean sect, was easily led to employ all his authority with his brethren, against the apostles. He at last, provoked beyond endurance at their steady and unflinching contempt of the repeated solemn injunction of the Sanhedrim, whose president and agent he was, rose up in all his anger and power, and, backed by his friends, seized the apostles and put them into the common jail, as inveterate disturbers of the peace of the city, and of the religious order of the temple. This commitment was intended to be merely temporary, and was to last only until a convenient time could be found for bringing them to trial, when the crowd of strangers should have retired from the city to their homes, and the excitement attendant on the preaching and miracles of the apostles should have subsided, so that the ordinary course of law might go on safely, even against these popular favorites, and they might be brought at last to the same fate as their Master. After the achievment of this project, “a consummation most devoutly to be wished” by every friend of the established order of things, the sect which was now making such rapid advances would fall powerless and lifeless, when its great heads were thus quietly lopped off. This seems to have been their well-arranged plan,――but it was destined to be spoiled in a way unlooked for; and this first step in it was to be made the means of a new triumph to the persecuted subjects of it. That very night, the prison doors were opened by a messenger of God, by whom the apostles were brought out of their confinement, and told, “Go, stand and speak in the temple, to the people, all the words of this life.” According to this divine command, they went into the temple and taught, early in the morning, probably before their luxurious