The magistrates were greatly alarmed when they learned that their victims were Roman citizens. The report of the outrage at Rome would cost them their offices, if not their lives. They therefore hastened to the prisoners, and became suppliants before those whom they had so inhumanly persecuted, entreating them to depart out of their city. Paul made no appeal to the authorities at Rome; he was too busy preaching the gospel to devote any time to personal redress: but the course he pursued throughout that scene of suffering placed Christianity on high vantage-ground in Philippi, and secured for its advocates the protection of law. These heroic men made no haste to leave the city. Returning to the house of Lydia, they met all the brethren who by their instrumentality had been led to embrace the religion of Jesus, and addressed them in farewell words of solace and counsel. Thus far it appears, from the form of the narrative, that Luke, the historian of the Acts of the Apostles, had accompanied the brethren on this missionary excursion. It is inferred that Luke and Timothy remained a little longer in Philippi, and that Luke did not rejoin Paul for some time. Paul and Silas set out to cross the mountains to Amphipolis, a city about thirty miles south-west from Philippi: thence they pressed on twenty-five miles, to Apollonia; and thence thirty-two miles farther, to Thessalonica. We have no record how long they stopped at the two first places, or what success attended their preaching there. In this important seaport, the most populous city in Macedonia, Paul and Silas remained for some time. The following is the inspired record of the commencement of Paul’s labors there:―― “They came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews: and Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures, opening and alleging that Christ must needs have suffered, and risen again from the dead; and that this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, is Christ.” The preaching of Paul and Silas in Thessalonica resulted in the conversion of many, both of the Jews and the Gentiles. It is recorded that among the converts there were numbered “of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a few.” In Paul’s two Epistles to the Thessalonians, we find quite a minute account of the sentiments which he advanced in this city. The spiritual reign of Christ, his second coming in clouds of glory with his holy angels, and the endless happiness which his disciples would then inherit, were the themes of infinite moment which inspired his fervid eloquence. The following extract from one of his letters, which he subsequently wrote to the Thessalonians from Corinth, will show the manner in which he treated such themes. Speaking of the second coming of Jesus in the day of his exaltation, he wrote,――