And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises. — Better, praying, they Were singing hymns, the Greek expressing one act rather than two. The act was, we may believe, habitual, and they would not intermit it even in the dungeon, and fastened as they were, so that they could not kneel. The hymn may have been one of the prayer-psalms of David, or possibly one of those, of which Pliny speaks in his letters, and which may well have been in use half a century earlier, in which men offered adoration to Christ as God (Epist. x. 96). The words of Tertullian to the martyrs of his time may well be quoted: Nihil crus sentit in nervo quum animus in cælo est; Etsi corpus detinetur, omnia spiritui patent — “The leg feels not the stocks when the mind is in heaven. Though the body is held fast, all things lie open in the spirit” (ad Mart. c. 2).
And the prisoners heard them. — Better, were listening eagerly, the kind of listening which men give to a musical performance. Never before, we may be sure, had those outcasts and criminals heard such sounds in such a place. For the most part those vaults echoed only with wild curses and foul jests.