'But he, beckoning unto them with the hand to hold their peace,
declared unto them how the Lord had brought him forth out of the
prison. And he said, Go shew these things unto James, and to the
brethren, And he departed, and went into another place.'--ACTS xii. 17.
When the angel 'departed from him,' Peter had to fall back on his own
wits, and they served him well. He 'considered the thing,' and resolved
to make for the house of Mary. He does not seem to have intended to
remain there, so dangerously near Herod, but merely to have told its
inmates of his deliverance, and then to have hidden himself somewhere,
till the heat of the hunt after him was abated. Apparently he did not
go into the house at all, but talked to the brethren, when they came
trooping after Rhoda to open the gate. The signs of haste in the latter
part of the story, where Peter has to think and act for himself,
contrast strikingly with the majestic leisureliness of the action of
the angel, who gave his successive commands to him to dress completely,
as if careless of the sleeping legionaries who might wake at any
moment. There was need for haste, for the night was wearing thin, and
the streets of Jerusalem were no safe promenade for a condemned
prisoner, escaped from his guards.
We do not deal here with the scene in Mary's house and at the gate. We
only note, in a word, the touch of nature in Rhoda's forgetting to open
'for gladness,' and so leaving Peter in peril, if a detachment of his
guards had already been told off to chase him. Equally true to nature,
alas, is the incredulity of the praying 'many,' when the answer to
their prayers was sent to them. They had rather believe that the poor
girl was 'mad' or that, for all their praying, Peter was dead, and this
was his 'angel,' than that their intense prayer had been so swiftly and
completely answered. Is their behaviour not a mirror in which we may
see our own?
Very like Peter, as well as very intelligible in the circumstances, is
it that he 'continued knocking,' Well he might, and evidently his
energetic fusillade of blows was heard even above the clatter of eager
tongues, discussing Rhoda's astonishing assertions. Some one, at last,
seems to have kept his head sufficiently to suggest that perhaps,
instead of disputing whether these were true or not, it might be well
to go to the door and see. So they all went in a body, Rhoda being
possibly afraid to go alone, and others afraid to stay behind, and
there they saw his veritable self. But we notice that there is no sign
of his being taken in and refreshed or cared for. He waved an
imperative hand, to quiet the buzz of talk, spoke two or three brief
words, and departed.