Sailing by the Islands of Coos and Rhodes, without stopping, they landed at Patara, a small seaport in the province of Lycia, on the southern coast of Asia Minor. Here Paul took another vessel, and leaving the island on the left, after a voyage of about three hundred and forty miles, landed at Tyre, in Syria. There was a church in Tyre; and Paul remained with the Christians there a week while the ship was discharging its cargo. The brethren, conscious of the danger he would encounter in Jerusalem, urged him not to go there; but Paul was fixed in his purpose. When the time came for the ship to sail again, the brethren, with their wives and children, accompanied him to the shore. There, upon the sandy beach, they knelt down, and commended the heroic and beloved apostle to the protection of God. From Tyre the ship sailed along the coast of Syria to Ptolemais, the celebrated Jean d’Acre of modern history. The distance between the two places was about thirty miles. Here Paul was again refreshed by the society of the disciples whom he found there, and with whom he remained but one day. Paul left the ship at Ptolemais, and continuing the journey by land, a distance of thirty or forty miles, reached Cæsarea. Philip the evangelist――one of the seven deacons chosen by the church in Jerusalem, to whom we have been before introduced as teaching and baptizing the eunuch on the road by Gaza, towards Egypt――resided in Cæsarea. His family consisted of four daughters, who were very earnest Christians, and who were endowed with the prophetic spirit. Paul remained for several days the guest of that Christian family. While residing there, a certain prophet, by the name of Agabus,――the same who had previously predicted “that there should be a great dearth throughout all the world,”[154]――came to Cæsarea. Agabus, using the imagery of action so common with the prophets, took Paul’s girdle, bound it around his own hands and feet, and said,―― “Thus saith the Holy Ghost: So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man to whom this girdle belongs, and they shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.”[155] The Christian friends of Paul at Cæsarea, when they heard this prophetic announcement, entreated him with the most earnest supplication, and even with tears, not to go up to Jerusalem, and thus place himself at the mercy of these cruel and inveterate foes. But Paul replied,―― “What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Luke, who still accompanied Paul, adds, “And, when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done.” Paul, with the companions who had attended him from Macedonia, and accompanied by several Christians from Cæsarea, went up to Jerusalem, and took up his residence at the house of Mnason, one of the early converts to Christianity.