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Here we have: —

I. MEN GETTING OUT OF ONE TROUBLE ONLY TO GET INTO ANOTHER. There is a mysterious law of succession in the difficulties of human life. "It never rains but it pours." There is a mystery of grace also in this succession. We do not know the best side of trouble until we have had a great deal of it. One trouble is of no use. You must get into the rhythm of sorrow, the rise and fall of the melody of discipline. It is marvellous how trouble can make the house comfortable with a strange sense of its being there at Heaven's bidding and under Heaven's order. It is not so with the first trouble — that always upsets a man. The second trouble is accepted in rather a better spirit; then the third comes like an expected guest. "It is better" — when trouble has wrought out its most sacred mystery — "to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting." Different nationalities have different salutations. The Greek would say, "Rejoice"! He lived in the region of the senses; he delighted in high art, in high feasting. The Hebrew spoke in a nobler bass; he said, "Peace be with you"! The Hebrew was the man of soul, the man of tragic experience. So trouble leads us into these deeper mysteries of experience; it takes away the merry shout, but fills the mouth with a nobler salutation. So Christ, in all His sorrows, said, "My peace I give unto you."

II. THE ROUGH JUDGMENTS WHICH MEN ARE ALWAYS PRONE TO PASS UPON MEN. When the viper fastened on Paul's hand, the simple Punic people said, "No doubt this man is a murderer," etc. Alas! how many murderers there would be if we had to judge of sin by apparently penal circumstances! How ready we are to form the ungracious judgment of one another Who ever failed in business, even in the most honourable way, without some friends knowing that this very collapse would take place, and without their taking morals from it intended to magnify their own better business capacity? Who ever pitied the man upon whom the viper fastened? Be more discriminate in judgment. Christ would see in the very worst man something to recognise, in a way that would give him another chance. There is no man quite so bad as he appears to be, even though the viper be on his hand. But some men do not look out for the mitigating qualities. Circumstances are sometimes against men. We have seen the viper of a false accusation fastening upon the hand that never did mischief to a human creature. I would pray for the spirit that pities the hand, rather than praises the viper; that would rather be deceived than willingly accept the ungenerous judgment. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

III. THE MYSTERY OF INTUITIVE RELIGION. It would seem as if religion were born in the human mind and heart. Here is a sense of a Presence in the universe that means righteousness. The heart instinctively says when wrong is done, "This must be punished." Christianity never uproots that, but sanctifies it. Who wrote that law? It is written upon the tablets of the mind by an invisible penman. The universe is against murder. We cannot give up the thought that the bad man will one day have the worst of it. The universe would fall to pieces if we could relinquish that doctrine.

IV. A POINT OF PROGRESS IN THE RELIGION OF THESE BARBARIANS. They who could not understand a sermon could comprehend the treatment of a viper, and reason upon it. They were observant people: they made religious deductions from ordinary facts (ver. 6). What was this? A direct contradiction of so-called experience. Here was the greater law setting itself in noble sovereignty over the common daily law. They were a frank people; they had attained a high point in education, in being able to shake out of the mind prejudices which opposed themselves to the startling fact which immediately appealed to their vision. If we could persuade modern nations to act in the same way, we should have no unbelievers. If every viper shaken off the hand proved the nobleness of the character so destroying it, and led to the higher reasoning that such a character is a Divine creation, we should have no theological controversy. All Christian history may be summed up in this one line: that the Christian hand has always shaken off the viper and flung it into the fire. It is part of the great original mystery; "the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." The viper is on us now; the poison has touched the red current of the blood; but, by the grace of Christ, we will shake it off, and it shall be destroyed.

(J. Parker, D. D.)

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KJV: And when they were escaped, then they knew that the island was called Melita.

WEB: When we had escaped, then they learned that the island was called Malta.