ed--penitents burdened with sin, souls dissatisfied with the
world and their ancestral religion, hearts yearning for divine sympathy
and love; "as many as were ordained to eternal life believed;" and
these formed in every city the nucleus of a Christian church. Even at
Lystra, where the defeat seemed so utter, a little group of faithful
hearts gathered round the mangled body of the apostle outside the city
gates; Eunice and Lois were there with tender womanly ministrations;
and young Timothy, as he looked down on the pale and bleeding face,
felt his heart forever knit to the hero who had courage to suffer to
the death for his faith.

87. In the intense love of such hearts Paul received compensation for
suffering and injustice. If, as some suppose, the people of this
region formed part of the Galatian churches, we see from his Epistle to
them the kind of love they gave him. They received him, he says, as an
angel of God, nay, as Jesus Christ Himself; they were ready to have
plucked out their eyes and given them to him. They were people of rude
kindness and headlong impulses; their native religion was one of
excitement and demonstrativeness, and they carried these
characteristics into the new faith they had adopted. They were filled
with joy and the Holy Ghost, and the revival spread on every hand with
great rapidity, till the word, sounding out from the little Christian
communities, was heard all along the slopes of Taurus and down the
glens of the Cestrus and Halys.

Paul's warm heart could not but enjoy such an outburst of affection.
He responded to it by giving in return his own deep love. The towns
mentioned in their itinerary are the Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra,
and Derbe; but, when at the last of them he had finished his course and
the way lay open to him to descend by the Cilician Gates to Tarsus and
thence get back to Antioch, he preferred to return by the way he had
come. In spite of the most imminent danger he revisited all these
places to see his dear converts again and cheer them in face of
persecution; and he ordained elders in every city to watch over the
churches in his absence.

88. The Return.--At length the missionaries descended again from these
uplands to the southern coast and sailed back to Antioch, from which
they had set out. Worn with toil and suffering, but flushed with the
joy of success, they appeared among those who had sent them forth and
had doubtless been following t