remarkable
a gift of eloquence that he was called the Son of Exhortation. An
incident which occurred at a later stage of this journey gives us a
glimpse of the appearance of the two men. When the inhabitants of
Lystra mistook them for gods, they called Barnabas Jupiter and Paul
Mercury. Now, in ancient art Jupiter was always represented as a tall,
majestic and benignant figure, while Mercury was the small, swift
messenger of the father of gods and men. Probably it appeared,
therefore, that the large, gracious, paternal Barnabas was the head and
director of the expedition, while Paul, little and eager, was the
subordinate. The direction in which they set out, too, was the one
which Barnabas might naturally have been expected to choose. They went
first to Cyprus, the island where his property had been and many of his
friends still were. It lay eighty miles to the southwest of Seleucia,
the seaport of Antioch, and they might reach it on the very day they
left their headquarters.

81. Cyprus--Change of Name.--But, although Barnabas appeared to be the
leader, the good man probably knew already that the humble words of the
Baptist might be used by himself with reference to his companion, "He
must increase, but I must decrease." At all events, as soon as their
work began in earnest, this was shown to be the relation between them.
After going through the length of the island, from east to west,
evangelizing, they arrived at Paphos, its chief town, and there the
problems they had come out to face met them in the most concentrated
form.

Paphos was the seat of the worship of Venus, the goddess of love, who
was said to have been born of the foam of the sea at this very spot;
and her worship was carried on with the wildest licentiousness. It was
a picture in miniature of Greece sunk in moral decay. Paphos was also
the seat of the Roman government, and in the pro-consular chair sat a
man, Sergius Paulus, whose noble character but utter lack of certain
faith formed a companion picture of the inability of Rome at that epoch
to meet the deepest necessities of her best sons. In the proconsular
court, playing upon the inquirer's credulity, a Jewish sorcerer and
quack, named Elymas, was flourishing, whose arts were a picture of the
lowest depths to which the Jewish character could sink. The whole
scene was a kind of miniature of the world the evils of which the
missionaries had set forth to cure.

In the presence of the