has his feet fast in the stocks this time, but they cannot conquer this irrepressible spirit; for "at midnight Paul and Silas prayed and sang praise unto God, and the prisoners heard them."

There was at Rome a famous dungeon called the Mamertine prison. This was a dungeon entirely beneath the pavement, and entered alone through an opening in the top. Down into this pit prisoners were lowered or thrown, where little light penetrated, where the vilest odors and the most abominable filth abounded. Into a dungeon of this sort was Jeremiah cast. "Then took they Jeremiah and cast him into the dungeon, that was in the court of the prison. And they let down Jeremiah with cords. And in the dungeon was no water, but mire. So Jeremiah sank in the mire." No description of the jail at Philippi remains to us. It may or it may not have been fashioned after the Roman model. But confinement in it could have been no holiday affair. At best we may consider it worse than anything which George Kennan has described as belonging to Siberia. Into the very worst portion of the prison the jailor thrust Paul and Silas, bleeding and lacerated from the brutal scourging which they had just received. And still more, he made their feet fast in the stocks-wooden blocks which stretched the feet far apart. That was no comfortable night which those men spent in that Philippian jail. And yet in the midst of its drear, in the face of its discouragement and suffering, Paul and Silas made the old dungeon vocal with song and prayer.

What a victory was that, a victory over the discouragements and ills of life! Dr. Franklin tells us that the New England Thanksgiving day had its origin in a time of great depression and despondency among the early settlers. Between the wilderness and the deep sea, between the rocky soil and the wintry skies,

it seemed to them that they were to be crushed. They had had one day of fasting and prayer and were proposing to hold another, when an old Puritan proposed that they have a day of thanksgiving instead; for after all their discouragements they had many mercies for which to be grateful. And that spirit struggled to the uppermost. And so they had a day of thanksgiving instead of a day of fasting. That was the Pilgrim Fathers' song in the night. Was it not a victory, a victory over discouragement?

There is no victory in singing when the sky is bright, when the pocket is full of money, when you have had a prosperous year, when your loved ones are all safe, when your plans have carried to a successful issue, when there is a fair prospect before you. Any one can sing then. The song will go of itself. The victory comes when you are praising God in circumstances just the reverse. Praising God on an empty stomach, and on an empty pocket book, and on a bleeding back; praising God when you are out of work and cannot find it, and your plans have all gone to ruin; that is a different thing. If you sing when all is bright what thank have ye; do not sinners even the same? If you cherish a glad heart in health and prosperity, what do ye more than others; do not even the publicans the same? It is the song in the night which counts for Christian character and testifies to an inward power, which lifts the soul above circumstances and makes him superior to them. This was the kind of victory which Paul won.

Philippi, you will remember, was the scene of one of the great military victories of ancient history. There the Republicans of Rome took their final stand. There Brutus and Cassius fell, while Mark Anthony by his courage and subtle generalship won his notable victory. But time has taken the crown from Anthony

and put it upon Paul, for his was the more splendid achievement. Anthony's victory is almost forgotten. I was obliged to refresh my memory of it; but Paul's splendid victory there over his adversities is a household tale; everyone knows of his song in the night.

Let us look for a few moments at the elements of that victory.

I. First and lowest, in it he overcame physical pain. Paul's back was bleeding. They had torn his raiment from off him, and each blow of the scourge had torn open the veins. Great purple welts marked the track of each cruel thong. With his feet far apart in the stocks a sitting posture was well nigh impossible, but any attempt to lie back upon the stone floor could only have brought fresh agony. That must have been a night of suffering long to be remembered, and yet Paul sang praises to God.

Perhaps we can measure the force of this fact by our own experiences. Have you ever had an opportunity to know how hard it is to be pleasant in suffering? When pain is on, human nature prompts to oaths and expletives and complaints instead of cheerfulness. I have heard of those with whom one can hardly live when they have an ache or pain. A toothache is sometimes quite sufficient to transform a genial gentleman into a brute with snarls and groans and explosions of temper. There are women whose nerves get the better of their souls, who when fatigued or in poor health are prone to fretfulness and querulous complaints. A suffering flesh is a foe to a Christian cheer not easily held under restraint, and a smile, a cheerful demeanor, a song, costs a battle. That was one battle which Paul won.

II. In the second instance Paul's song in prison showed his victory over the discouragements of adverse circumstances. Fortune had frowned upon the apostle

at each step of this his second missionary journey. It began with a quarrel and separation from his old friend Barnabas. Then he was taken sick among the Gauls, a strange people. And when at last he reached Asia he was baffled in his attempts to preach the gospel. He then essayed to go into Bithynia, but that way was blocked up. He had come down to Troas, perhaps wondering what all these hindrances meant, when he saw in a vision the man of Macedonia, saying, "Come over and help us." Hope then gleamed afresh, and Paul had crossed the Ægean Sea thinking that at last an open door was found. But at the very first place he had visited, when as yet he had gained only a single disciple for Christ, he found himself seized by the Roman authorities and after barbarous treatment cast into a dungeon. We might think that would have been a sober night for Paul, a night of serious misgivings and discouragement. It was less than this which cast Elijah down under the juniper tree, wishing that he were dead. It was less than this which led Moses to abandon a long cherished ambition and for forty years to wander as a cowboy in the wilderness lands of Midian. It was no more than this which made David, all discouraged, exclaim, "There is but a step between me and death."

Our feelings are apt to respond to our successes and failures as the mercury does to the changes in the atmosphere. Sometimes a man comes home from business at night, and from his crabbed, ill-natured manner, from the way he treats the cat or speaks to the children, from the way he grumbles about the dinner and then gloomily retreats within the evening journal, his wife does not need to be told that something has gone wrong with him during the day.

It is not difficult to sustain the shock of one disap

pointment or two, perhaps, but it is the succession of reverses which tells upon the spirits. Sometimes a man finds his whole life's dream broken to fragments by the repeated blows of adverse fortune; can he look on and smile and thank God and build anew, or is he known among his fellows as a disappointed man? Sometimes a man finds reverse following reverse in his efforts to lift himself into financial independence, and the years go and still he is in poverty while his comrades are in affluence. Is he still sweet-tempered, with a song going to his toil, or is he broken in spirit and soured by the misfortunes of his lot? There are those to whom repeated disappointments have wrought a crushed spirit. Pride has not gone. Life has not made them humble, but it has bitterly humiliated them. They no longer aspire. They bitterly submit to their lot. They are like a wounded eagle which no longer strives to fly, but there is fierce defiance in the eye. The battle has gone the wrong way. Misfortunes have conquered the soul.

III. Paul's song in the night was also a victory over resentment. He had suffered from wrong as well as from disappointments. He had been unlawfully scourged. He had been lied about. He had been persecuted for doing good, and with the stigma of a traitor upon him cast into prison. It is no easy thing to raise a song over the consciousness that we have been unjustly treated. A person who can be sweet in suffering and cheerful in spite of adverse circumstances, may utterly fail under the indignity of wrong, may flame with resentment when unjustly treated in word or deed. If we had been met at the church door this morning with the intelligence that we had been wronged by an employer, a customer or a neighbor; if some breath of slander blackening our character, misconstruing our