With this accession to his company, Paul proceeded through the cities
of that region which he had before visited, and communicated to them
the decrees passed by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem, for the
regulation of the deportment of professing Christians, in regard to
the observance of Mosaic usages. They all, moreover, labored for the
extension of the churches already founded, and thus caused them to be
built up, so that they received fresh additions daily. Nor did Paul
limit his apostolic labors to the mere confirmation of the work begun
on his tour with Barnabas; but after traversing all his old fields
of exertion, he extended his journey far north of his former route,
through all Phrygia, and Galatia, a province which had never before
been blessed with the presence of a Christian missionary,――and after
laboring in his high vocation there, he was disposed to move west,
to the Ionian or true Asian shore of the Aegean, but was checked by
a direction which he could not resist; and passing northward of the
true Asian cities, he came out of Phrygia into Mysia, the province
that occupies the northwestern corner of all Asia Minor, bounded
north by the Propontis and Hellespont, and west by the northern
part of the Aegean,――the true Asia lying south of it, within the
geographical division commonly named Lydia. Having entered Mysia, they
were expecting to turn northeast into Bithynia, when again their own
preferences and counsels were overruled by the same mysterious impulse
as before, and they therefore continued their westward journey to the
shore of the Hellespont and Aegean, arriving within the classic region
of the Troad, at the modern city of Alexandria Troas, some miles south
of that most glorious of all the scenes of Grecian poetical antiquity,
where, thirteen hundred years before, “TROY WAS.” Here they rested for
a brief space, and while they were undecided as to the course which
they ought next to pursue, Paul had a remarkable vision, which gave a
summons too distinct to be mistaken or doubted, to a field in which the
most noble triumphs of the cross were destined to be won under his own
personal ministration, and where through thousands of years the name of
Christ should consecrate and re-exalt the land, over all whose hills,
mountains, streams, valleys, and seas, then as now, clustered the
rich associations of the most splendid antiquity that is marked in the
records of the past, with the beautiful and the excellent in poetry,
art, taste, literature, philosophy and moral exaltation. In the night,
as Paul was slumbering at his stopping-place, in the Troad, there
appeared to him a vision of a Macedonian, who seemed to cry out
beseechingly to him――“Come over into Macedonia, and help us!” This
voice of earnest prayer for the help of Christ, rolling over the wide
Aegean, was enough to move the ardent spirit of Paul, and on waking he
therefore summoned his companions to attend him in his voyage to this
new field. He had been joined here by a new companion, as appears from
the fact, that the historian of the Acts of the apostles now begins
to speak in the first person, of the apostolic company, and it thence
appears that besides Silas and Timotheus, Paul was now attended by
Luke. Setting sail from Troas, as soon as they could get ready for this
unexpected extension of their travels, the whole four were wafted by
a fresh south-eastern breeze from the Asian coast, first to the large
island of Samothrace; and on the second day, they came to Neapolis, a
town on the coast of Macedonia, which is the seaport of the great city
of Philippi.