Albert Barnes Commentary Acts 19:20

"So mightily grew the word of the Lord and prevailed." — Acts 19:20 (ASV)

So mightily. So powerfully. It had such efficacy and power in this wicked city. The power must have been mighty that would thus make them willing, not only to cease to practice imposition, but also to give up all hopes of future gains and to destroy their property. On this instructive narrative, we may remark:

1. That religion has power to break the hold of sinners on unjust and dishonest means of living.
2. That those who have been engaged in an unchristian and dishonorable practice will abandon it when they become Christians.
3. That their abhorrence of their former course will be, and ought to be, expressed as publicly as the offense was.
4. That the evil practice will be abandoned at any sacrifice, however great. The only question will be, what is right; not, what will it cost. Property, in the view of a converted person, is nothing when compared with a good conscience.
5. This conduct of those who had used "curious arts" shows us what ought to be done by those who have been engaged in any evil course of life and who are then converted. If their conduct was right—and who can doubt it?—it settles a great principle on which young converts should act.

If a person has been engaged in the slave trade, they will abandon it; and their duty will not be to sell their ship to someone whom they know will continue the traffic. Their property should be withdrawn from the business publicly, either by being destroyed or by being converted to a useful purpose.

If a person has been a distiller of ardent spirits as a drink, their duty will be to forsake their evil course. Nor will it be their duty to sell their distillery to someone who will continue the business, but to withdraw their property from it publicly, either by destroying it or by converting it to some useful purpose.

If a person has been engaged in traffic in ardent spirits, their duty is not to sell their stock to those who will continue the sale of the poison but to withdraw it from public use—converting it to some useful purpose if they can; if not, by destroying it.

All that has ever been said by money-loving distillers or vendors of ardent spirits about the loss they would sustain by abandoning the business might have been said by these practitioners of "curious arts" in Ephesus. And if the excuses of rum-selling people are valid, their conduct was folly; and they should either have continued the business of practicing "curious arts" after they were converted or have sold their "books" to those who would have continued it.

For assuredly, it was not worse to practice jugglery and fortune-telling than it is to destroy the bodies and souls of people by the traffic in ardent spirits. And yet how few people there are in Christian lands who practice on the principle of these honest, but comparatively unenlightened people at Ephesus!