hundred thousand inhabitants, is
built in great part within an old broken-down volcanic crater, and the
proximity of its awful neighbour shows that it stands perilously on
the brink of destruction, and may share at any time the fate of
Pompeii and Herculaneum. Were it not for the safety-valves of Vesuvius
and Solfatara, the whole intermediate region, with its towns and
villages and swarming population, would be blown into the air by the
vehement forces that are struggling beneath. It was this elemental
war--fiercer, we have reason to believe, in classic times than
now--that gave rise to the religious fables of the poets. The gloomy
shades of Avernus, the tremendous battles of the gods, the dark
pictures of Tartarus and the Stygian river, were the supernatural
suggestions of a fiery soil. To the fierce throes of volcanic action
we owe the weird mythology of the ancients, which has imparted such a
profound charm to the region, and also, strange as it may seem, the
surpassing loveliness of Nature herself. The fairest regions of the
earth are ever those where the awful power of fire has been at work,
giving to the landscape that passionate expression which lights up a
human face with its most impressive beauty.

The visit of the apostle to Puteoli served many important purposes. He
who had sent his people Israel into Egypt and Babylon that they might
be benefited by coming into contact with other civilisations, sent St.
Paul to this famous region where Greece and Rome--which,
geographically and historically, were turned back to back, the face of
Greece looking eastward, the face of Italy looking westward--seemed to
meet and to blend into each other, in order that his sympathies might
be expanded by coming into contact with all that man could realise of
earthly glory or conceive of religion. We can trace the overruling
Hand that was shaping the destinies of the Church in the course which
he was led to take from Jerusalem to Damascus, and thence to Asia
Minor, Corinth, Athens, Philippi, Puteoli, and Rome; gathering as he
went along the fruits of all the wide diversity of experience and
culture characterising these places, to equip him more thoroughly for
his work for the Gentiles. And we see also how the doctrines of the
Gospel were becoming more clearly and fully unfolded by this method of
progression; how questions were settled and principles carried out
which have shown to us the exceeding riches of Divine grace in a way