Acts 16:26

26. And suddenly What sense, says the Rationalist, in a miracle here where it accomplishes nothing which might not have been attained without one? We reply, with Baumgarten, that the miracle was a true, illustrious, and necessary “Divine Sign,” confirming the apostles in the reality of the divine invitation, from the man of Macedonia, of Christianity into Europe. And Baumgarten also plausibly shows that this whole scene was a symbol and a shadow of the future history of Christianity in Europe. Philippi, as a colonia, is an image, ambitiously so, of the Roman pagan power. She opens the first Gentile persecution against the Church, emblem of the pagan persecution for four centuries. For three centuries the martyred Church sings her songs of triumph in the midnight, the bloodshed, and the stocks. Yet the very foundations of that inner structure are shaken, and by the very majesty of the secular power is the Church at last enfranchised.

A great earthquake The voice of God answers to the voice of man; the earthquake responds to the hymn. The σεισμος was so much an earthquake as a prison-quake. It was not from below, but from above, as truly as the pentecostal house-shaking. It was not, therefore, a mere indiscriminate jar and crash, but a distinct and specific act of the divine volition by which the foundations of the prison were shaken, the prison doors were flung open, and the fetters all sprung, while the power-bound limbs of the prisoners were unable to escape. Doubtless the city and the magistrates heard and were awed by the concussion; for even the ancient pagan recognised in the earthquake the movement of God. The solemn echoes of the apostles’ preaching had for many days been resounding through the city, convictions and misgivings had disturbed the public heart, and it may be saintly supposed that this immediately following sign should dismay the consciences of the guilty inhabitants and magistrates.