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This section of the history marks itself off - an episode which gave apostles and disciples, albeit in a very modified time, to rest, and made them spectators of an ample display of certain aspects of human nature. The world, ever ready to arm against the truth, and especially against Christ, the first distinct and bright embodiment of truth, is left sometimes to fight out its own battles. And the amount of smoke in which they end is sometimes, as in the present case, something wonderful. Notice -

I. THE ADMITTED ROOT OF GRIEVANCE WITH THE WORLDLY MAN. The illustration which Demetrius here affords of what is often deepest down in the heart of the world - love of money gain, faith in money gain, the illusion that money gain is the one thing needful, and by which alone men live - seems for a moment pleasantly relieved by his apparent free admission of it. Any sense of relief, however, arising from this consideration is speedily largely discounted:

1. By the fact that the ready admission of it but speaks the deeper root of the malady, and that it is a fact grown to be viewed as venial, perhaps natural, nay, very probably necessary, and therefore true to right nature.

2. By the fact that the admission, though apparently free enough, was, when it occurred, only of a semi-public character. Demetrius owns and unfolds the state of his own mind, not to the wide world, but to his own "craftsmen," whose sympathies would lie very near his own - and he knew it.

II. THE UNDERTAKING TO ENLIST A VASTLY WIDER CIRCUMFERENCE OF FEELING, BY MIXING THE PERSONAL OR AT MOST CLASS GRIEVANCE UP WITH THE RELIGIOUS SENSE OF "ALL ASIA AND THE WORLD? The opportunity was no doubt a tempting one. And though too evident to allow of its inferring any great talent on the part of Demetrius, yet he skillfully avails himself of it. Some persons will miss very tempting opportunities, which are as evident as they may be tempting. "The children of this world are," however, "wiser in their generation," as a rule, "than the children of light;" and this was one instance of it. It took most successfully.

1. It is the speedy outcry of" the whole city." And the movement spread so rapidly from the craftsmen class interest, that when the whole city is "come together" (ver. 32), "the more part knew not wherefore." It made little difference. They had their throats and their limbs with them, and a couple of victims, "Gains and Aristarchus" (ver. 29), traveling "companions of Paul."

2. Most combustible fuel was forthcoming to add to the fire, in the person of a Jew (ver. 34), who was probably unpopular with his own people. He was thrust into prominence by his own people (ver. 33), either that he might be their scapegoat and bear the brunt, or possibly because he was judged to be the most competent man. Of this view there is some evidence in his ready preparedness to address the surging multitude and to "make his defense." Anyway, for two hours more did the conflagration burn more fiercely for that one move. And it was a move which derived its force from "the burning religious question."

3. The success of the scheme of Demetrius is illustrated most significantly in what it elicited from the lips of the "town-clerk" (vers. 37, 38), especially in his huge fallacy of asserting to acclamation (which no doubt rang again in that theatre, but to the fiat denial of truth and time succeeding and now "of all the world", "Seeing that these things cannot be spoken against,"

III. THE COLLAPSE. However uninformed in religion the town-clerk was, it is plain that he was a competent man.

1. He defends Gains and Aristarchus, and presumably Paul He finds and pronounces it boldly that "these men" have done nothing amiss. They are neither sacrilegious "robbers" nor "blasphemers" albeit of an idol!

2. He reduces the swelling hazards of Demetrius to their proper proportions. It is a mere matter of himself and his friends. And it is a mere matter of whether he can prove anything that will entitle him to redress. If he can, he must go to the right place to do it, and take the right course. Probably Demetrius, having set the fire going, had some time ago dropped into the background. But if not, if he and his party had stayed to keep up to the full the excitement, they must inevitably have felt now very small. It were not to have been wondered at if the multitude had turned upon them, with the threat of lynch law.

3. He apprises the whole city that disaster may be the sequel of a whole day's wasted uproar and undefended concourse. And the people seemed open to his wisdom, and wiser by far than Demetrius at all events. So ends in smoke the work of wickedness, the worldliness of the worldly, the self-seeking and avarice of the man who has far keener foresight for gain and money than any care, past, present, or to come, for truth and religion. The day has been uproar; the human nature of that day has been mere confusion: unseen presences have, however, been in the scene, and still voices at last prevail, which pronounce condemnation on the evil-doing ringleader, which reduce him to shame and humiliation in the eyes of those whose passion he had needlessly excited, and most remarkable of all, which demand and obtain silence. It is no dim augury of the close of the world's day, when time shall be ripe. - B.

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KJV: And the same time there arose no small stir about that way.

WEB: About that time there arose no small stir concerning the Way.