held fast the feet that came to the shores of the West shod with
the preparation of the gospel of peace, to proclaim deliverance to the
captives, sprang that glorious liberty which has broken every fetter
that bound the bodies and souls of men throughout Christendom. After
the earthquake that shook the prison walls and released the prisoners
came the still, small voice of power, which overthrew the tyrannies
and superstitions of ages, and remade society from its very
foundations.

Very similar were the circumstances in which the apostle landed at the
quay of Puteoli. A weary, worn-out prisoner, accused by his own
countrymen, on his way to be judged at the tribunal of the Roman
emperor, associated with a troop of malefactors, St. Paul
disembarked, on the 3d of May of the year 59, from the ship _Castor
and Pollux_, after having gone through storm and shipwreck, and first
touched the shore of the wonderful land destined afterwards to be the
scene of the mightiest triumphs of the Gospel, and the most
enlightened centre for its diffusion throughout the world. Like the
birth of Rome itself, whose obscure foundation, according to the
beautiful myth, was laid by the outcast son of a Vestal Virgin, the
kingdom of the despised virgin-born Jesus of Nazareth that cometh not
with observation, stole unawares, amid the meanest circumstances, into
the very heart of the Roman world. Momentous events were taking place
at the time throughout the Roman Empire, attracting all eyes, and
engaging the attention of all minds; but the unnoticed landing at
Puteoli of the humble Jewish prisoner, judging by its marvellous
results, was by far the most important. It marked a new era in the
history of the world. And there was something significant in the
coincidence that St. Paul should have come to the Italian shore in the
ship _Castor and Pollux_, the names not merely of the patrons of
sailors, but also of the saviours of Rome. The mighty empire which
human tyranny had established has crumbled to pieces, and we walk
to-day amid its ruins; but the kingdom of peace and righteousness
which Paul came to inaugurate has spread from that coign of vantage
over all the earth, and in a world of death and change has impressed
upon the minds of men with a new force the idea of the eternal and the
unchangeable.

Earth holds no fairer scene than that which met the apostle's gaze as
he entered the bay of Puteoli. "See Naples, and die," is the cuckoo
cry of the