Acts 12:7. And, behold, the angel of the Lord. This should be rendered, ‘an angel of the Lord,' one of that glorious host of Spirits of whom mention so often is made in this book of the ‘Acts' with reference to their office toward the faithful servants of God.

A light shined in the prison. In the deep darkness of that early spring morning, a strange light from a radiant form suddenly lit up the cell, with the sleeping figures of the two soldiers and their prisoner.

He smote Peter on the side in order to rouse him from slumber. In the beautiful fancy of Keble, the wearied apostle, sleeping as he thought his last sleep, and dreaming of the glorious witness to his Lord he was to witness when the day dawned, would naturally mistake the angel's touch and voice for the summons to execution:

‘His dream is changed the tyrant's voice

Calls to that last of glorious deeds;

But as he rises to rejoice,

Not Herod, but an angel leads.'

Christian Year, ‘ St. Peter's Day.'

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Old Testament