These events and the occasion of them occurred in the reign of Claudius Caesar, as Luke particularly records,――thus marking the lapse of time during the unregistered period of the apostolic acts; which is also confirmed by the circumstances of Herod Agrippa’s reign, mentioned immediately after, as occurring “about that time;” for, as has been specified above, Herod Agrippa did not rule Judea till the reign of Claudius. The crucifixion of Jesus occurred three years before the death of Tiberius; and as the whole four years of the reign of Caligula was passed over in this space, it could not have been less than ten years after the crucifixion, when these events took place. This calculation allows time for such an advance of the apostolic enterprise, as would, under their devoted energy, make the sect most formidable to those who regarded its success as likely to shake the security of the established order of religious things, by impairing the popular reverence for the regularly constituted heads of Judaism. Such had been its progress, and such was the impression made by its advance. There could no longer be any doubt as to the prospect of its final ascendency, if it was quietly left to prosper under the steady and devoted labors of its apostles, with all the advantages of the re-action which had taken place from the former cruel persecution which they had suffered. For several years the government of Palestine had been in such hands that the Sanhedrim had few advantages for securing the aid of the secular power, in consummating their exterminating plans against the growing heresy. Not long after the time of Pilate, the government of Judea had been committed by the emperor to Publius Petronius, the president of Syria, a man who, on the valuable testimony of Josephus, appears to have been of the most amiable and upright character,――wholly devoted to the promotion of the real interests of the people whom he ruled. On several occasions, he distinguished himself by his tenderness towards the peculiarly delicate religious feelings of the Jews, and once even risked and incurred the wrath of the vindictive Caligula, by disobeying his commands to profane the temple at Jerusalem by the erection of that emperor’s statue within its holy courts,――a violation of the purity of the place which had been suggested to his tyrannical caprice by the spiteful hint of Apion, of Alexandria. But though Petronius, in this matter, showed a disposition to incur every hazard to spare the national and devotional feelings of the Jews so awful an infliction, there is nothing in his conduct which would lead us to suppose that he would sacrifice justice to the gratification of the persecuting malice of the Jews, any more than to the imperious tyranny of Caligula. The fairest conclusion from the events of his administration, is, that he regulated his behavior uniformly by his own sense of justice, with hardly any reference to the wild impulses,