Jerusalem on his _Invasion Visit_,--he was not quite so perfectly under the government of his friends. On the present occasion, we shall find him sufficiently tractable. Was this a man to be an antagonist and overmatch for wild beasts? Now as to the above-mentioned principal case. Plaintiffs, dealers in silver goods: Defendants, dealers in words. To be rivals in trade, it is not necessary that men should deal exactly in the same articles:--the sale of the words injured the sale of the goods: so at least the plaintiffs took upon them to aver: for, in such a case, suspicion is not apt to lie asleep. The church of Diana was the Established Church, of that place and time. To the honour, the plaintiffs added the profit, of being silversmiths to that same Excellent Church. To the value of that sort of evidence, which it is the province of silversmiths to furnish, no established church was ever insensible. The evidence, furnished by the church silversmiths of these days, is composed of _chalices_: under the Pagan dispensation, the evidence furnished by the church silversmiths of the church of the Ephesian Diana, was composed of _shrines_. When, with that resurrection of his own, and that Gospel of his own, of which so copious a sample remains to us in his Epistles,--Paul, with or without the name of Jesus in his mouth, made his appearance in the market, Plaintiffs, as we have seen, took the alarm. They proceeded, as the pious sons of an established church could not fail to proceed. Before action commenced, to prepare the way for a suitable judgment,--they set to work, and set on fire the inflammable part of the public mind. The church was declared to be in danger, ver. 27: the church of Diana, just as the church of England and Ireland would be, should any such sacrilegious proposition be seriously made, as that of tearing out of her bosom any of those precious sinecures, of which her vitals are composed. In Ephesus, it is not stated, that, at that time, any society bearing the name of the _Vice Society_, or the _Constitutional Association_, was on foot. But, of those pious institutions the equivalent could not be wanting. Accordingly, the charge of _blasphemy_, it may be seen, ver. 37, was not left unemployed. So the defence shows: the defence, to wit, made by the probity and wisdom of the judge: for, by the violence of the church mob,--who, but for him, were prepared to have given a precedent, to that which set Birmingham in flames,--the defendants were placed in the condition of prisoners: and the judge, seeing the violence, of the prejudice they had to encounter, felt the necessity, of adding to the function of judge, that of counsel for the prisoners. But it is time to turn to the text: not a particle of it can be spared. ACTS xix. 22-41.