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Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts

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Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture: the Acts

Author: Alexander Maclaren


        
Release date: June 1, 2005 [eBook #8397]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2012

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE: THE ACTS ***




Produced by Charles Franks, John Hagerson and the Online
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EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D., Litt. D.


THE ACTS



EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D.D., Litt. D.


THE ACTS

_Chaps. I to XII_ VERSE 17.



CONTENTS

THE ASCENSION (Acts i. 1-14)

THE THEME OF ACTS (Acts i. 1, 2; xxviii. 30, 31)

THE FORTY DAYS (Acts i. 3)

THE UNKNOWN TO-MORROW (Acts i. 7)

THE APOSTOLIC WITNESSES (Acts i. 21, 22)

THE ABIDING GIFT AND ITS TRANSITORY ACCOMPANIMENTS (Acts ii. 1-13)

THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT (Acts ii. 2, 3, 17; 1 John ii. 20)

PETER'S FIRST SERMON (Acts ii. 32-47)

THE NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME (Acts ii. 36)

A FOURFOLD CORD (Acts ii. 42)

A PURE CHURCH AN INCREASING CHURCH (Acts ii. 47)

'THEN SHALL THE LAME MAN LEAP AS AN HART' (Acts iii. 1-16)

'THE PRINCE OF LIFE' (Acts iii. 14, 15)

THE HEALING POWER OF THE NAME (Acts iii. 16)

THE SERVANT OF THE LORD (Acts iii. 26)

THE FIRST BLAST OF TEMPEST (Acts iv. 1-14)

WITH AND LIKE CHRIST (Acts iv. 13)

OBEDIENT DISOBEDIENCE (Acts iv. 19-31)

IMPOSSIBLE SILENCE (Acts iv. 20)

THE SERVANT AND THE SLAVES (Acts iv. 25, 27, 29)

THE WHEAT AND THE TARES (Acts iv. 32; v. 11)

WHOM TO OBEY,--ANNAS OR ANGEL? (Acts v. 17-32)

OUR CAPTAIN (Acts v. 31)

GAMALIEL'S COUNSEL (Acts v. 38, 39)

FILLED WITH THE SPIRIT (Acts vi. 3, 5, 8)

STEPHEN'S VISION (Acts vii. 56)

THE YOUNG SAUL AND THE AGED PAUL (Acts vii. 58; Philemon 9)

THE DEATH OF THE MASTER AND THE DEATH OF THE SERVANT (Acts vii. 59, 60)

SEED SCATTERED AND TAKING ROOT (Acts viii. 1-17)

SIMON THE SORCERER (Acts viii. 21)

A MEETING IN THE DESERT (Acts viii. 26-40)

PHILIP THE EVANGELIST (Acts viii. 40)

GRACE TRIUMPHANT (Acts ix. 1-12; 17-20)

'THIS WAY' (Acts ix. 2)

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF THE EARLY CHURCH (Acts ix. 31)

COPIES OF CHRIST'S MANNER (Acts ix. 34, 40)

WHAT GOD HATH CLEANSED (Acts x. 1-20)

'GOD IS NO RESPECTER OF PERSONS' (Acts x. 30-44)

PETER'S APOLOGIA (Acts xi. 1-18)

THE FIRST PREACHING AT ANTIOCH (Acts xi. 20, 21)

THE EXHORTATION OF BARNABAS (Acts xi. 23)

WHAT A GOOD MAN IS, AND HOW HE BECOMES SO (Acts xi. 24)

A NICKNAME ACCEPTED (Acts xi. 26)

THE MARTYRDOM OF JAMES (Acts xii. 2)

PETER'S DELIVERANCE FROM PRISON (Acts xii. 5, R.V.)

THE ANGEL'S TOUCH (Acts xii. 7, 23)

'SOBER CERTAINTY' (Acts xii. 11)

RHODA (Acts xii. 13)

PETER AFTER HIS ESCAPE (Acts xii. 17)



THE ASCENSION

'The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began
both to do and teach, 2. Until the day in which He was taken up, after
that He through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the Apostles
whom He had chosen: 3. To whom also He shewed Himself alive after His
passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and
speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: 4. And, being
assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not
depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which,
saith He, ye have heard of Me. 5. For John truly baptized with water;
but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. 6.
When they therefore were come together, they asked of Him, saying,
Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? 7.
And He said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the
seasons, which the Father hath put in His own power. 8. But ye shall
receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall
be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in
Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. 9. And when He had
spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud
received Him out of their sight. 10. And while they looked stedfastly
toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white
apparel; 11. Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up
into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven,
shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven. 12.
Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which
is from Jerusalem a Sabbath day's journey. 13. And when they were come
in, they went up into an upper room, where abode both Peter, and James,
and John, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew,
James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother of
James. 14. These all continued with one accord in prayer and
supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with
His brethren.'--ACTS i. 1-14.

The Ascension is twice narrated by Luke. The life begun by the
supernatural birth ends with the supernatural Ascension, which sets the
seal of Heaven on Christ's claims and work. Therefore the Gospel ends
with it. But it is also the starting-point of the Christ's heavenly
activity, of which the growth of His Church, as recorded in the Acts,
is the issue. Therefore the Book of the Acts of the Apostles begins
with it.

The keynote of the 'treatise' lies in the first words, which describe
the Gospel as the record of what 'Jesus _began_ to do and teach,' Luke
would have gone on to say that this second book of his contained the
story of what Jesus went on to do and teach after He was 'taken up,' if
he had been strictly accurate, or had carried out his first intention,
as shown by the mould of his introductory sentence; but he is swept on
into the full stream of his narrative, and we have to infer the
contrast between his two volumes from his statement of the contents of
his first.

The book, then, is misnamed Acts of the Apostles, both because the
greater number of the Apostles do nothing in it, and because, in
accordance with the hint of the first verse, Christ Himself is the doer
of all, as comes out distinctly in many places where the critical
events of the Church's progress and extension are attributed to 'the
Lord.' In one aspect, Christ's work on earth was finished on the Cross;
in another, that finished work is but the beginning both of His doing
and teaching. Therefore we are not to regard His teaching while on
earth as the completion of Christian revelation. To set aside the
Epistles on the plea that the Gospels contain Christ's own teaching,
while the Epistles are only Paul's or John's, is to misconceive the
relation between the earthly and the heavenly activity of Jesus.

The statement of the theme of the book is followed by a brief summary
of the events between the Resurrection and Ascension. Luke had spoken
of these in the end of his Gospel, but given no note of time, and run
together the events of the day of the Resurrection and of the following
weeks, so that it might appear, as has been actually contended that he
meant, that the Ascension took place on the very day of Resurrection.
The fact that in this place he gives more detailed statements, and
tells how long elapsed between the Resurrection Sunday and the
Ascension, might have taught hasty critics that an author need not be
ignorant of what he does not mention, and that a detailed account does
not contradict a summary one,--truths which do not seem very recondite,
but have often been forgotten by very learned commentators.

Three points are signalised as occupying the forty days: commandments
were given, Christ's actual living presence was demonstrated (by sight,
touch, hearing, etc.), and instructions concerning the kingdom were
imparted. The old blessed closeness and continuity of companionship had
ceased. Our Lord's appearances were now occasional. He came to the
disciples, they knew not whence; He withdrew from them, they knew not
whither. Apparently a sacred awe restrained them from seeking to detain
Him or to follow Him. Their hearts would be full of strangely mingled
feelings, and they were being taught by gentle degrees to do without
Him. Not only a divine decorum, but a most gracious tenderness,
dictated the alternation of presence and absence during these days.

The instructions then given are again referred to in Luke's Gospel, and
are there represented as principally directed to opening their minds
'that they might understand the Scriptures.' The main thing about the
kingdom which they had then to learn, was that it was founded on the
death of Christ, who had fulfilled all the Old Testament predictions.
Much remained untaught, which after years were to bring to clear
knowledge; but from the illumination shed during these fruitful days
flowed the remarkable vigour and confidence of the Apostolic appeal to
the prophets, in the first conflicts of the Church with the rulers.
Christ is the King of the kingdom, and His Cross is His throne,--these
truths being grasped revolutionised the Apostles' conceptions. They are
as needful for us.

From verse 4 onwards the last interview seems to be narrated. Probably
it began in the city, and ended on the slopes of Olivet. There was a
solemn summoning together of the Eleven, which is twice referred to
(vs. 4, 6). What awe of expectancy would rest on the group as they
gathered round Him, perhaps half suspecting that it was for the last
time! His words would change the suspicion into certainty, for He
proceeded to tell them what they were not to do and to do, when left
alone. The tone of leave-taking is unmistakable.

The prohibition against leaving Jerusalem implies that they would have
done so if left to themselves; and it would have been small wonder if
they had been eager to hurry back to quiet Galilee, their home, and to
shake from their feet the dust of the city where their Lord had been
slain. Truly they would feel like sheep in the midst of wolves when He
had gone, and Pharisees and priests and Roman officers ringed them
round. No wonder if, like a shepherdless flock, they had broken and
scattered! But the theocratic importance of Jerusalem, and the fact
that nowhere else could the Apostles secure such an audience for their
witness, made their 'beginning at Jerusalem' necessary. So they were to
crush their natural longing to get back to Galilee, and to stay in
their dangerous position. We have all to ask, not where we should be
most at ease, but where we shall be most efficient as witnesses for
Christ, and to remember that very often the presence of adversaries
makes the door 'great and effectual.'

These eleven poor men were not left by their Master with a hard task
and no help. He bade them 'wait' for the promised Holy Spirit, the
coming of whom they had heard from Him when in the upper room He spoke
to them of 'the Comforter.' They were too feeble to act alone, and
silence and retirement were all that He enjoined till they had been
plunged into the fiery baptism which should quicken, strengthen, and
transform them.

The order in which promise and command occur here shows how graciously
Jesus considered the Apostles' weakness. Not a word does He say of
their task of witnessing, till He has filled their hearts with the
promise of the Spirit. He shows them the armour of power in which they
are to be clothed, before He points them to the battlefield. Waiting
times are not wasted times. Over-eagerness to rush into work,
especially into conspicuous and perilous work, is sure to end in
defeat. Till we feel the power coming into us, we had better be still.

The promise of this great gift, the nature of which they but dimly
knew, set the Apostles' expectations on tiptoe, and they seem to have
thought that their reception of it was in some way the herald of the
establishment of the Messianic kingdom. So it was, but in a very
different fashion from their dream. They had not learned so much from
the forty days' instructions concerning the kingdom as to be free from
their old Jewish notions, which colour their question, 'Wilt Thou at
this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?' They believed that
Jesus could establish His kingdom when He would. They were right, and
also wrong,--right, for He is King; wrong, for its establishment is not
to be effected by a single act of power, but by the slow process of
preaching the gospel.

Our Lord does not deal with their misconceptions which could only be
cured by time and events; but He lays down great principles, which we
need as much as the Eleven did. The 'times and seasons,' the long
stretches of days, and the critical epoch-making moments, are known to
God only; our business is, not to speculate curiously about these, but
to do the plain duty which is incumbent on the Church at all times. The
perpetual office of Christ's people to be His witnesses, their
equipment for that function (namely, the power of the Holy Spirit
coming on them), and the sphere of their work (namely, in ever-widening
circles, Jerusalem, Samaria, and the whole world), are laid down, not
for the first hearers only, but for all ages and for each individual,
in these last words of the Lord as He stood on Olivet, ready to depart.

The calm simplicity of the account of the Ascension is remarkable. So
great an event told in such few, unimpassioned words! Luke's Gospel
gives the further detail that it was in the act of blessing with
uplifted hands that our Lord was parted from the Eleven. Two
expressions are here used to describe the Ascension, one of which ('was
taken up') implies that He was passive, the other of which ('He went')
implies that He was active. Both are true. As in the accounts of the
Resurrection He is sometimes said to have been raised, and sometimes to
have risen, so here. The Father took the Son back to the glory, the Son
left the world and went to the Father. No chariot of fire, no
whirlwind, was needed to lift Him to the throne. Elijah was carried by
such agency into a sphere new to him; Jesus ascended up where He was
before.

No other mode of departure from earth would have corresponded to His
voluntary, supernatural birth. He  carried manhood up to the throne of
God. The cloud which received Him while yet He was well within sight of
the gazers was probably that same bright cloud, the symbol of the
Divine Presence, which of old dwelt between the cherubim. His entrance
into it visibly symbolised the permanent participation, then begun, of
His glorified manhood in the divine glory.

Most true to human nature is that continued gaze upwards after He had
passed into the hiding brightness of the glory-cloud. How many of us
know what it is to look long at the spot on the horizon where the last
glint of sunshine struck the sails of the ship that bore dear ones away
from us! It was fitting that angels, who had heralded His birth and
watched His grave, should proclaim His Second Coming to earth.

It was gracious that, in the moment of keenest sense of desolation and
loss, the great hope of reunion should be poured into the hearts of the
Apostles. Nothing can be more distinct and assured than the terms of
that angel message. It gives for the faith and hope of all ages the
assurance that He will come; that He who comes will be the very Jesus
who went; that His coming will be, like His departure, visible,
corporeal, local. He will bring again all His tenderness, all His
brother's heart, all His divine power, and will gather His servants to
Himself.

No wonder that, with such hopes flowing over the top of their sorrow,
like oil on troubled waters, the little group went back to the upper
room, hallowed by memories of the Last Supper, and there waited in
prayer and supplication during the ten days which elapsed till
Pentecost. So should we use the interval between any promise and its
fulfilment. Patient expectation, believing prayer, harmonious
association with our brethren, will prepare us for receiving the gift
of the Spirit, and will help to equip us as witnesses for Jesus.



THE THEME OF ACTS

'The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began
both to do and teach. 2. Until the day in which He was taken up.'--ACTS
i. 1, 2.

'And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received
all that came in unto him, 31. Preaching the kingdom of God, and
teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all
confidence, no man forbidding him.'--ACTS xxviii. 30, 31.

So begins and so ends this Book. I connect the commencement and the
close, because I think that the juxtaposition throws great light upon
the purpose of the writer, and suggests some very important lessons.
The reference to 'the former treatise' (which is, of course, the Gospel
according to Luke) implies that this Book is to be regarded as its
sequel, and the terms of the reference show the writer's own conception
of what he was going to do in his second volume. 'The former treatise
have I made ... of all that Jesus _began_ both to do and teach until
the day in which He was taken up.' Is not the natural inference that
the latter treatise will tell us what Jesus _continued_ 'to do and
teach' _after_ He was taken up? I think so. And thus the writer sets
forth at once, for those that have eyes to see, what he means to do,
and what he thinks his book is going to be about.

So, then, the name 'The Acts of the Apostles,' which is not coeval with
the book itself, is somewhat of a misnomer. Most of the Apostles are
never heard of in it. There are, at the most, only three or four of
them concerning whom anything in the book is recorded. But our first
text supplies a deeper reason for regarding that title as inadequate,
and even misleading. For, if the theme of the story be what Christ did,
then the book is, not the 'Acts of the _Apostles_,' but the 'Acts of
_Jesus Christ_' through His servants. He, and He alone, is the Actor;
and the men who appear in it are but instruments in His hands, He alone
being the mover of the pawns on the board.

That conception of the purpose of the book seems to me to have light
cast upon it by, and to explain, the singular abruptness of its
conclusion, which must strike every reader. No doubt it is quite
possible that the reason why the book ends in such a singular fashion,
planting Paul in Rome, and leaving him there, may be that the date of
its composition was that imprisonment of Paul in the Imperial City, in
a part of which, at all events, we know that Luke was his companion.
But, whilst that consideration may explain the point at which the book
stops, it does not explain the way in which it stops. The historian
lays down his pen, possibly because he had brought his narrative up to
date. But a word of conclusion explaining that it was so would have
been very natural, and its absence must have had some reason. It is
also possible that the arrival of the Apostle in the Imperial City, and
his unhindered liberty of preaching there, in the very centre of power,
the focus of intellectual life, and the hot-bed of corruption for the
known world, may have seemed to the writer an epoch which rounded off
his story. But I think that the reason for the abruptness of the
record's close is to be found in the continuity of the work of which it
tells a part. It is the unfinished record of an incomplete work. The
theme is the work of Christ through the ages, of which each successive
depository of His energies can do but a small portion, and must leave
that portion unfinished; the book does not so much end as stop. It is a
fragment, because the work of which it tells is not yet a whole.

If, then, we put these two things--the beginning and the ending of the
Acts--together, I think we get some thoughts about what Christ began to
do and teach on earth; what He continues to do and teach in heaven; and
how small and fragmentary a share in that work each individual servant
of His has. Let us look at these points briefly.

I. First, then, we have here the suggestion of what Christ began to do
and teach on earth.

Now, at first sight, the words of our text seem to be in strange and
startling contradiction to the solemn cry which rang out of the
darkness upon Calvary. Jesus said, 'It is finished!' and 'gave up the
ghost.' Luke says He 'began to do and teach.' Is there any
contradiction between the two? Certainly not. It is one thing to lay a
foundation; it is another thing to build a house. And the work of
laying the foundation must be finished before the work of building the
structure upon it can be begun. It is one thing to create a force; it
is another thing to apply it. It is one thing to compound a medicine;
it is another thing to administer it. It is one thing to unveil a
truth; it is another to unfold its successive applications, and to work
it into a belief and practice in the world. The former is the work of
Christ which was finished on earth; the latter is the work which is
continuous throughout the ages.

'He began to do and teach,' not in the sense that any should come after
Him and do, as the disciples of most great discoverers and thinkers
have had to do: namely, systematise, rectify, and complete the first
glimpses of truth which the master had given. 'He began to do and
teach,' not in the sense that after He had 'passed into the heavens'
any new truth or force can for evermore be imparted to humanity in
regard of the subjects which He taught and the energies which He
brought. But whilst thus His work is complete, His earthly work is also
initial. And we must remember that whatever distinction my text may
mean to draw between the work of Christ in the past and that in the
present and the future, it does not mean to imply that when He
'ascended up on high' He had not completed the task for which He came,
or that the world had to wait for anything more, either from Him or
from others, to eke out the imperfections of His doctrine or the
insufficiencies of His work.

Let us ever remember that the initial work of Christ on earth is
complete in so far as the revelation of God to men is concerned. There
will be no other. There is needed no other. Nothing more is possible
than what He, by His words and by His life, by His gentleness and His
grace, by His patience and His Passion, has unveiled to all men, of the
heart and character of God. The revelation is complete, and he that
professes to add anything to, or to substitute anything for, the
finished teaching of Jesus Christ concerning God, and man's relation to
God, and man's duty, destiny, and hopes, is a false teacher, and to
follow him is fatal. All that ever come after Him and say, 'Here is
something that Christ has not told you,' are thieves and robbers, 'and
the sheep will not hear them.'

In like manner that work of Christ, which in some sense is initial, is
complete as Redemption. 'This Man has offered up one sacrifice for sins
for ever.' And nothing more can He do than He has done; and nothing
more can any man or all men do than was accomplished on the Cross of
Calvary as giving a revelation, as effecting a redemption, as lodging
in the heart of humanity, and in the midst of the stream of human
history, a purifying energy, sufficient to cleanse the whole black
stream. The past work which culminated on the Cross, and was sealed as
adequate and accepted of God in the Resurrection and Ascension, needs
no supplement, and can have no continuation, world without end. And so,
whatever may be the meaning of that singular phrase, 'began to do and
teach,' it does not, in the smallest degree, conflict with the
assurance that He hath ascended up on high, 'having obtained eternal
redemption for us,' and 'having finished the work which the Father gave
Him to do.'

II. But then, secondly, we have to notice what Christ continues to do
and to teach after His Ascension.

I have already suggested that the phraseology of the first of my texts
naturally leads to the conclusion that the theme of this Book of the
Acts is the continuous work of the ascended Saviour, and that the
language is not forced by being thus interpreted is very plain to any
one who will glance even cursorily over the contents of the book
itself. For there is nothing in it more obvious and remarkable than the
way in which, at every turn in the narrative, all is referred to Jesus
Christ Himself.

For instance, to cull one or two cases in order to bring the matter
more plainly before you--When the Apostles determined to select another
Apostle to fill Judas' place, they asked Jesus Christ to show which 'of
these two Thou hast chosen.' When Peter is called upon to explain the
tongues at Pentecost he says, 'Jesus hath shed forth this which ye now
see and hear.' When the writer would tell the reason of the large first
increase to the Church, he says, 'The Lord added to the Church daily
such as should be saved.' Peter and John go into the Temple to heal the
lame man, and their words to him are, 'Do not think that our power or
holiness is any factor in your cure. The Name hath made this man
whole.' It is the Lord that appears to Paul and to Ananias, to the one
on the road to Damascus and to the other in the city. It is the Lord to
whom Peter refers Aeneas when he says, 'Jesus Christ maketh thee
whole.' It was the Lord that 'opened the heart of Lydia.' It was the
Lord that appeared to Paul in Corinth, and said to him, 'I have much
people in this city'; and again, when in the prison at Jerusalem, He
assured the Apostle that he would be carried to Rome. And so, at every
turn in the narrative, we find that Christ is presented as influencing
men's hearts, operating upon outward events, working miracles,
confirming His word, leading His servants, and prescribing for them
their paths, and all which they do is done by the hand of the Lord with
them confirming the word which they spoke. Jesus Christ is the Actor,
and He only is the Actor; men are His implements and instruments.

The same point of view is suggested by another of the characteristics
of this book, which it shares in common with all Scripture narratives,
and that is the stolid indifference with which it picks up and drops
men, according to the degree in which, for the moment, they are the
instruments of Christ's power. Supposing a man had been writing Acts of
the Apostles, do you think it would have been possible that of the
greater number of them he should not say a word, that concerning those
of whom he does speak he should deal with them as this book does,
barely mentioning the martyrdom of James, one of the four chief
Apostles; allowing Peter to slip out of the narrative after the great
meeting of the Church at Jerusalem; letting Philip disappear without a
hint of what he did thereafter; lodging Paul in Rome and leaving him
there, with no account of his subsequent work or martyrdom? Such
phenomena--and they might be largely multiplied--are only explicable
upon one hypothesis. As long as electricity streams on the carbon point
it glows and is visible, but when the current is turned to another lamp
we see no more of the bit of carbon. As long as God uses a man the man
is of interest to the writers of the Scriptures. When God uses another
one, they drop the first, and have no more care about him, because
their theme is not men and their doings, but God's doings through men.

On us, and in us, and by us, and for us, if we are His servants, Jesus
Christ is working all through the ages. He is the Lord of Providence,
He is the King of history, in His hand is the book with the seven
seals; He sends His Spirit, and where His Spirit is He is; and what His
Spirit does He does. And thus He continues to teach and to work from
His throne in the heavens.

He continues to teach, not by the communication of new truth. That is
finished. The volume of Revelation is complete. The last word of the
divine utterances hath been spoken until that final word which shall
end Time and crumble the earth. But the application of the completed
Revelation, the unfolding of all that is wrapped in germ in it; the
growing of the seed into a tree, the realisation more completely by
individuals and communities of the principles and truths which Jesus
Christ has brought us by His life and His death--that is the work that
is going on to-day, and that will go on till the end of the world. For
the old Puritan belief is true, though the modern rationalistic
mutilations of it are false, 'God hath more light yet to break
forth'--and our modern men stop there. But what the sturdy old Puritan
said was, 'more light yet to break forth from His holy Word.' Jesus
Christ teaches the ages--through the lessons of providence and the
communication of His Spirit to His Church--to understand what He gave
the world when He was here.

In like manner He works. The foundation is laid, the healing medicine
is prepared, the cleansing element is cast into the mass of humanity;
what remains is the application and appropriation, and incorporation in
conduct, of the redeeming powers that Jesus Christ has brought. And
that work is going on, and will go on, till the end.

Now these truths of our Lord's continuous activity in teaching and
working from heaven may yield us some not unimportant lessons. What a
depth and warmth and reality the thoughts give to the Christian's
relation to Jesus Christ! We have to look back to that Cross as the
foundation of all our hope. Yes! But we have to think, not only of a
Christ who did something for us long ago in the past, and there an end,
but of a Christ who to-day lives and reigns, 'to do and to teach'
according to our necessities. What a sweetness and sacredness such
thoughts impart to all external events, which we may regard as being
the operation of His love, and as moved by the hands that were nailed
to the Cross for us, and now hold the sceptre of the universe for the
blessing of mankind! What a fountain of hope they open in estimating
future probabilities of victory for truth and goodness! The forces of
good and evil in the world seem very disproportionate, but we forget
too often to take Christ into account. It is not _we_ that have to
fight against evil; at the best we are but the sword which Christ
wields, and all the power is in the hand that wields it. Great men die,
good men die; Jesus Christ is not dead. Paul was martyred: Jesus lives;
He is the anchor of our hope. We see miseries and mysteries enough, God
knows. The prospects of all good causes seem often clouded and dark.
The world has an awful power of putting drags upon all chariots that
bear blessings, and of turning to evil every good. You cannot diffuse
education, but you diffuse the taste for rubbish and something worse,
in the shape of books. No good thing but has its shadow of evil
attendant upon it. And if we had only to estimate by visible or human
forces, we might well sit down and wrap ourselves in the sackcloth of
pessimism. 'We see not yet all things put under Him'; but 'we see Jesus
crowned with glory and honour,' and the vision that cheered the first
martyr--of Christ 'standing at the right hand of God'--is the rebuke of
every fear and every gloomy anticipation for ourselves or for the world.

What a lesson of lowliness and of diligence it gives us! The jangling
church at Corinth fought about whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas was
the man to lead the Church, and the experience has been repeated over
and over again. 'Who is Paul? Who is Apollos? but ministers by whom ye
believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. Be not puffed up one
against another. Be not wise in your own conceits.' You are only a
tool, only a pawn in the hand of the Great Player. If you have
anything, it is because you get it from Him. See that you use it, and
do not boast about it. Jesus Christ is the Worker, the only Worker; the
Teacher, the only Teacher. All our wisdom is derived, all our light is
enkindled. We are but the reeds through which His breath makes music.
And 'shall the axe boast itself,' either 'against' or apart from 'Him
that heweth therewith'?

III. Lastly, we note the incompleteness of each man's share in the
great work.

As I said, the book which is to tell the story of Christ's continuous
unfinished work must stop abruptly. There is no help for it. If it was
a history of Paul it would need to be wound up to an end and a selvage
put to it, but as it is the history of Christ's working, the web is not
half finished, and the shuttle stops in the middle of a cast. The book
must be incomplete, because the work of which it is the record does not
end until 'He shall have delivered up the Kingdom to the Father, and
God shall be all in all.'

So the work of each man is but a fragment of that great work. Every man
inherits unfinished tasks from his predecessors, and leaves unfinished
tasks to his successors. It is, as it used to be in the Middle Ages,
when the hands that dug the foundations, or laid the first courses, of
some great cathedral, were dead long generations before the gilded
cross was set on the apex of the needlespire, and the glowing glass
filled in to the painted windows. Enough for us, if we lay a stone,
though it be but one stone in one of the courses of the great building.

Luke has left plenty of blank paper at the end of his second
'treatise,' on which he meant that succeeding generations should write
their partial contributions to the completed work. Dear friends, let us
see that we write our little line, as monks in their monasteries used
to keep the chronicle of the house, on which scribe after scribe toiled
at its illuminated letters with loving patience for a little while, and
then handed the pen from his dying hand to another. What does it matter
though we drop, having done but a fragment? He gathers up the fragments
into His completed work, and the imperfect services which He enabled
any of us to do will all be represented in the perfect circle of His
finished work. The Lord help us to be faithful to the power that works
in us, and to leave Him to incorporate our fragments in His mighty
whole!



THE FORTY DAYS

'To whom also He shewed Himself alive after His passion by many
infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the
things pertaining to the kingdom of God.'--ACTS i. 3.

The forty days between the Resurrection and the Ascension have
distinctly marked characteristics. They are unlike to the period before
them in many respects, but completely similar in others; they have a
preparatory character throughout; they all bear on the future work of
the disciples, and hearten them for the time when they should be left
alone.

The words of the text give us their leading features. They bring out--

1. Their evidential value, as confirming the fact of the Resurrection.

'He showed Himself alive after His passion by ... proofs.'

By sight, repeated, to individuals, to companies, to Mary in her
solitary sadness, to Peter the penitent, to the two on the road to
Emmaus. At all hours: in the evening when the doors were shut; in the
morning; in grey twilight; in daytime on the road. At many places--in
houses, out of doors.

The signs of true corporeity--the sight, the eating.

The signs of bodily identity,--'Reach hither thy hand.' 'He showed them
His hands and His side.'

Was this the glorified body?

The affirmative answer is usually rested on the facts that He was not
known by Mary or the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and that He came
into the upper room when the doors were shut. But the force of these
facts is broken by remembering that Mary saw nothing about Him unlike
other men, but supposed Him to be the gardener--which puts the idea of
a glorified body out of the question, and leaves us to suppose that she
was full of weeping indifference to any one.

Then as to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, Luke carefully tells us
that the reason why they did not know Him was _in them_ and not in
Him--that it was 'because their eyes were holden,' not because His body
was changed.

And as to His coming when the doors were shut, why should not that be
like the other miracles, when 'He conveyed Himself away, a multitude
being in the place,' and when He walked on the waters?

There cannot then be anything decidedly built on these facts, and the
considerations on the other side are very strong. Surely the whole
drift of the narrative goes in the direction of representing Christ's
'glory' as beginning with His Ascension, and consequently the 'body of
His glory' as being then assumed. Further, the argument of 1 Cor. xv.
goes on the assumption that 'flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom
of God,' that is, that the material corporeity is incongruous with, and
incapable of entrance into, the conditions of that future life, and, by
parity of reasoning, that the spiritual body, which is to be conformed
to the body of Christ's glory, is incongruous with, and incapable of
entrance into, the conditions of this earthly life. As is the
environment, so must be the 'body' that is at home in it.

Further, the facts of our Lord's eating and drinking after His
Resurrection are not easily reconcilable with the contention that He
was then invested with the glorified body.

We must, then, think of transfiguration, rather than of resurrection
only, as the way by which He passed into the heavens. He 'slept' but
woke, and, as He ascended, was 'changed.'

II. The renewal of the old bond by the tokens of His unchanged
disposition.

Recall the many beautiful links with the past: the message to Peter;
that to Mary; 'Tell My brethren,' 'He was known in breaking of bread,'
'Peace be with you!' (repetition from John xvii.), the miraculous
draught of fishes, and the meal and conversation afterwards, recalling
the miracle at the beginning of the closer association of the four
Apostles of the first rank with their Lord. The forty days revealed the
old heart, the old tenderness. He remembers all the past. He sends a
message to the penitent; He renews to the faithful the former gift of
'peace.'

How precious all this is as a revelation of the impotence of death in
regard to Him and us! It assures us of the perpetuity of His love. He
showed Himself after His passion as the same old Self, the same old
tender Lover. His appearances then prepare us for the last vision of
Him in the Apocalypse, in which we see His perpetual humanity, His
perpetual tenderness, and hear Him saying: 'I am ... the Living One,
and I became dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore.'

These forty days assure us of the narrow limits of the power of death.
Love lives through death, memory lives through it. Christ has lived
through it and comes up from the grave, serene and tender, with
unruffled peace, with all the old tones of tenderness in the voice that
said 'Mary!' So may we be sure that through death and after it we shall
live and be ourselves. We, too, shall show ourselves alive after we
have experienced the superficial change of death.

III. The change in Christ's relations to the disciples and to the
world. 'Appearing unto them by the space of forty days.'

The words mark a contrast to Christ's former constant intercourse with
the disciples. This is occasional; He appears at intervals during the
forty days. He comes amongst them and disappears. He is seen again in
the morning light by the lake-side and goes away. He tells them to come
and meet Him in Galilee. That intermittent presence prepared the
disciples for His departure. It was painful and educative. It carried
out His own word, 'And now I am no more in the world.'

We observe in the disciples traces of a deeper awe. They say little.
'Master!' 'My Lord and my God!' 'None durst ask Him, Who art Thou?'
Even Peter ventures only on 'Lord, Thou knowest all things,' and on one
flash of the old familiarity: 'What shall this man do?' John, who
recalls very touchingly, in that appendix to his Gospel, the blessed
time when he leaned on Jesus' breast at supper, now only humbly
follows, while the others sit still and awed, by that strange fire on
the banks of the lonely lake.

A clearer vision of the Lord on their parts, a deeper sense of who He
is, make them assume more of the attitude of worshippers, though not
less that of friends. And He can no more dwell with them, and go in and
out among them.

As for the world--'It seeth Me no more, but ye see Me.' He was 'seen of
_them_,' not of others. There is no more appeal to the people, no more
teaching, no more standing in the Temple. Why is this? Is it not the
commentary on His own word on the Cross, 'It is finished!' marking most
distinctly that His work on earth was ended when He died, and so
confirming that conception of His earthly mission which sees its
culmination and centre of power in the Cross?

IV. Instruction and prophecy for the future.

The preparation of the disciples for their future work and condition
was a chief purpose of the forty days. Jesus spoke 'of the things
pertaining to the Kingdom of God.' He also 'gave commandments to the
Apostles.'

Note how much there is, in His conversations with them--

1. Of opening to them the Scriptures. 'Christ must needs suffer,' etc.

2. Of lessons for their future, thus fitting them for their task.

3. Mark how this transitional period taught them that His going away
was not to be sorrow and loss, but joy and gain, 'Touch Me not, for I
have not yet ascended.'

Our present relation to the ascended Lord is as much an advance on that
of the disciples to the risen Lord, as that was on their relation to
Him during His earthly life. They had more real communion with Him
when, with opened hearts, they heard Him interpret the Scriptures
concerning Himself, and fell at His feet crying 'My Lord and my God!'
though they saw Him but for short seasons and at intervals, than when
day by day they were with Him and knew Him not. As they grew in love
and ripened in knowledge, they knew Him better and better.

For us, too, these forty days are full of blessed lessons, teaching us
that real communion with Jesus is attained by faith in Him, and that He
is still working in and for us, and is still present with us. The joy
with which the disciples saw Him ascend should live on in us as we
think of Him enthroned. The hope that the angels' message lit up in
their hearts should burn in ours. The benediction which the Risen Lord
uttered on those who have not seen and yet have believed falls in
double measure on those who, though now they see Him not, yet believing
rejoice in Jesus with joy unspeakable and full of glory.



THE UNKNOWN TO-MORROW

_A New Year's Sermon_

'It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father
hath put in His own power.'--ACTS i. 7.

The New Testament gives little encouragement to a sentimental view of
life. Its writers had too much to do, and too much besides to think
about, for undue occupation with pensive remembrances or imaginative
forecastings. They bid us remember as a stimulus to thanksgiving and a
ground of hope. They bid us look forward, but not along the low levels
of earth and its changes. One great future is to draw all our longings
and to fix our eyes, as the tender hues of the dawn kindle infinite
yearnings in the soul of the gazer. What may come is all hidden; we can
make vague guesses, but reach nothing more certain. Mist and cloud
conceal the path in front of the portion which we are actually
traversing, but when it climbs, it comes out clear from the fogs that
hang about the flats. We can track it winding up to the throne of
Christ. Nothing is certain, but the coming of the Lord and 'our
gathering together to Him.'

The words of this text in their original meaning point only to the
ignorance of the time of the end which Christ had been foretelling. But
they may allow of a much wider application, and their lessons are in
entire consonance with the whole tone of Scripture in regard to the
future. We are standing now at the beginning of a New Year, and the
influence of the season is felt in some degree by us all. Not for the
sake of repressing any wise forecasting which has for its object our
preparation for probable duties and exigencies; not for the purpose of
repressing that trustful anticipation which, building on our past time
and on God's eternity, fronts the future with calm confidence; not for
the sake of discouraging that pensive and softened mood which if it
does nothing more, at least delivers us for a moment from the tyrannous
power of the present, do we turn to these words now; but that we may
together consider how much they contain of cheer and encouragement, of
stimulus to our duty, and of calming for our hearts in the prospect of
a New Year. They teach us the limits of our care for the future, as
they give us the limits of our knowledge of it. They teach us the best
remedies for all anxiety, the great thoughts that tranquillise us in
our ignorance, viz. that all is in God's merciful hand, and that
whatever may come, we have a divine power which will fit us for it; and
they bid us anticipate our work and do it, as the best counterpoise for
all vain curiosity about what may be coming on the earth.

I. The narrow limits of our knowledge of the future.

We are quite sure that we shall die. We are sure that a mingled web of
joy and sorrow, light shot with dark, will be unrolled before us--but
of anything more we are really ignorant. We know that certainly the
great majority of us will be alive at the close of this New Year; but
who will be the exceptions? A great many of us, especially those of us
who are in the monotonous stretch of middle life, will go on
substantially as we have been going on for years past, with our
ordinary duties, joys, sorrows, cares; but to some of us, in all
probability, this year holds some great change which may darken all our
days or brighten them. In all our forward-looking there ever remains an
element of uncertainty. The future fronts us like some statue beneath
its canvas covering. Rolling mists hide it all, except here and there a
peak.

I need not remind you how merciful and good it is that it is so.
Therefore coming sorrows do not diffuse anticipatory bitterness as of
tainted water percolating through gravel, and coming joys are not
discounted, and the present has a reality of its own, and is not
coloured by what is to come.

Then this being so--what is the wise course of conduct? Not a confident
reckoning on to-morrow. There is nothing elevating in anticipation
which paints the blank surface of the future with the same earthly
colours as dye the present. There is no more complete waste of time
than that. Nor is proud self-confidence any wiser, which jauntily takes
for granted that 'tomorrow will be as this day.' The conceit that
things are to go on as they have been fools men into a dream of
permanence which has no basis. Nor is the fearful apprehension of evil
any wiser. How many people spoil the present gladness with thoughts of
future sorrow, and cannot enjoy the blessedness of united love for
thinking of separation!

In brief, it is wise to be but little concerned with the future,
except--

1. In the way of taking reasonable precautions to prepare for its
probabilities.

2. To fit ourselves for its duties.

One future we may contemplate. Our fault is not that we look forward,
but that we do not look far enough forward. Why trouble with the world
when we have heaven? Why look along the low level among the mists of
earth and forests and swamps, when we can see the road climbing to the
heights? Why be anxious about what three hundred and sixty-five days
may bring, when we know what Eternity will bring? Why divert our
God-given faculty of hope from its true object? Why torment ourselves
with casting the fashion of uncertain evils, when we can enter into the
great peace of looking for 'that blessed Hope'?

II. The safe Hands which keep the future.

'The Father hath put in His own power.' We have not to depend upon an
impersonal Fate; nor upon a wild whirl of Chance; nor upon 'laws of
averages,' 'natural laws,' 'tendencies' and 'spirit of the age'; nor
even on a theistic Providence, but upon a Father who holds all things
'in His own power,' and wields all for us. So will not our way be made
right?

Whatever the future may bring, it will be loving, paternal discipline.
He shapes it all and keeps it in His hands. Why should we be anxious?
That great name of 'Father' binds Him to tender, wise, disciplinary
dealing, and should move us to calm and happy trust.

III. The sufficient strength to face the future.

'The power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you' is promised here to the
disciples for a specific purpose; but it is promised and given to us
all through Christ, if we will only take it. And in Him we shall be
ready for all the future.

The Spirit of God is the true Interpreter of Providence. He calms our
nature, and enlightens our understanding to grasp the meaning of all
our experiences. The Spirit makes joy more blessed, by keeping us from
undue absorption in it. The Spirit is the Comforter. The Spirit fits us
for duty.

So be quite sure that nothing will come to you in your earthly future,
which He does not Himself accompany to interpret it, and to make it
pure blessing.

IV. The practical duty in view of the future.

(a) The great thing we ought to look to in the future is our work,--not
what we shall enjoy or what we shall endure, but what we shall do. This
is healthful and calming.

(b) The great remedy for morbid anticipation lies in regarding life as
the opportunity for service. Never mind about the future, let it take
care of itself. Work! That clears away cobwebs from our brains, as when
a man wakes from troubled dreams, to hear 'the sweep of scythe in
morning dew,' and the shout of the peasant as he trudges to his task,
and the lowing of the cattle, and the clink of the hammer.

(c) The great work we have to do in the future is to be witnesses for
Christ. This is the meaning of all life; we can do it in joy and in
sorrow, and we shall bear a charmed life till it be done. So the words
of the text are a promise of preservation.

Then, dear brethren, how do you stand fronting that Unknown? How can
you face it without going mad, unless you know God and trust Him as
your Father through Christ? If you do, you need have no fear. To-morrow
lies all dim and strange before you, but His gentle and strong hand is
working in the darkness and He will shape it right. He will fit you to
bear it all. If you regard it as your supreme duty and highest honour
to be Christ's witness, you will be kept safe, 'delivered out of the
mouth of the lion,' that by you 'the preaching may be fully known.'

If not, how dreary is that future to you, 'all dim and cheerless, like
a rainy sea,' from which wild shapes may come up and devour you! Love
and friendship will pass, honour and strength will fail, life will ebb
away, and of all that once stretched before you, nothing will be left
but one little strip of sand, fast jellying with the tide beneath your
feet, and before you a wild unlighted ocean!



THE APOSTOLIC WITNESSES

'Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that
the Lord Jesus went in and out among us ... must one be ordained to be
a witness with us of His resurrection.'--ACTS i. 21, 22.

The fact of Christ's Resurrection was the staple of the first Christian
sermon recorded in this Book of the Acts of the Apostles. They did not
deal so much in doctrine; they did not dwell very distinctly upon what
we call, and rightly call, the atoning death of Christ; out they
proclaimed what they had seen with their eyes--that He died and rose
again.

And not only was the main subject of their teaching the Resurrection,
but it was the Resurrection in one of its aspects and for one specific
purpose. There are, speaking roughly, three main connections in which
the fact of Christ's rising from the dead is viewed in Scripture, and
these three successively emerge in the consciousness of the Early
Church.

It was, first, a fact affecting Him, a testimony concerning Him,
carrying with it necessarily some great truths with regard to Him, His
character, His nature, and His work. And it was in that aspect mainly
that the earliest preachers dealt with it. Then, as reflection and the
guidance of God's good Spirit led them to understand more and more of
the treasure which lay in the fact, it came to be to them, next, a
pattern, and a pledge, and a prophecy of their own resurrection. The
doctrine of man's immortality and the future life was evolved from it,
and was felt to be implied in it. And then it came to be, thirdly and
lastly, a symbol or figure of the spiritual resurrection and newness of
life into which all they were born who participated in His death. They
knew Him first by His Resurrection; they then knew 'the power of His
Resurrection' as a pledge of their own; and lastly, they knew it as
being the pattern to which they were to be conformed even whilst here
on earth.

The words which I have read for my text are the Apostle Peter's own
description of what was the office of an Apostle--'to be a witness with
us of Christ's Resurrection.' And the statement branches out, I think,
into three considerations, to which I ask your attention now. First, we
have here the witnesses; secondly, we have the sufficiency of their
testimony; and thirdly, we have the importance of the fact to which
they bear their witness. The Apostles are testimony-bearers. Their
witness is enough to establish the fact. The fact to which they witness
is all-important for the religion and the hopes of the world.

I. First, then, the Witnesses.

Here we have the 'head of the Apostolic College,' the 'primate' of the
Twelve, on whose supposed primacy--which is certainly not a
'rock'--such tremendous claims have been built, laying down the
qualifications and the functions of an Apostle. How simply they present
themselves to his mind! The qualification is only personal knowledge of
Jesus Christ in His earthly history, because the function is only to
attest His Resurrection. Their work was to bear witness to what they
had seen with their eyes; and what was needed, therefore, was nothing
more than such familiarity with Christ as should make them competent
witnesses to the fact that He died, and to the fact that the same Jesus
who had died, and whom they knew so well, rose again and went up to
heaven.

The same conception of an Apostle's work lies in Christ's last solemn
designation of them for their office, where their whole commission is
included in the simple words, 'Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.' It
appears again and again in the earlier addresses reported in this book.
'This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.' 'Whom
God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses.' 'With great
power gave the Apostles witness of the Resurrection.' 'We are His
witnesses of these things.' To Cornelius, Peter speaks of the Apostles
as 'witnesses chosen before of God, who did eat and drink with Him
after He rose from the dead'--and whose charge, received from Christ,
was 'to testify that it is He which was ordained of God to be the Judge
of quick and dead.' Paul at Antioch speaks of the Twelve, from whom he
distinguishes himself, as being 'Christ's witnesses to _the
people_'--and seems to regard them as specially commissioned to the
Jewish nation, while he was sent to 'declare unto you'--Gentiles--the
same 'glad tidings,' in that 'God had raised up Jesus again.' So we
might go on accumulating passages, but these will suffice.

I need not spend time in elaborating or emphasising the contrast which
the idea of the Apostolic office contained in these simple words
presents to the portentous theories of later times. I need only remind
you that, according to the Gospels, the work of the Apostles in
Christ's lifetime embraced three elements, none of which were peculiar
to them--to be with Christ, to preach, and to work miracles; that their
characteristic work after His Ascension was this of witness-bearing;
that the Church did not owe to them as a body its extension, nor
Christian doctrine its form; that whilst Peter and James and John
appear in the history, and Matthew perhaps wrote a Gospel, and the
other James and Jude are probably the authors of the brief Epistles
which bear their names--the rest of the Twelve never appear in the
subsequent history. The Acts of the Apostles is a misnomer for Luke's
second 'treatise.' It tells the work of Peter alone among the Twelve.
The Hellenists Stephen and Philip, the Cypriote Barnabas, and the man
of Tarsus--greater than them all--these spread the name of Christ
beyond the limits of the Holy City and the chosen people. The solemn
power of 'binding and loosing' was not a prerogative of the Twelve, for
we read that Jesus came where 'the _disciples_ were assembled,' and
that 'the _disciples_ were glad when they saw the Lord'; and 'He
breathed on _them_, and said, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever
sins ye remit, they are remitted."'

Where in all this is there a trace of the special Apostolic powers
which have been alleged to be transmitted from them? Nowhere. Who was
it that came and said, 'Brother Saul, the Lord hath sent me that thou
mightest be filled with the Holy Ghost'? A simple 'layman'! Who was it
that stood by, a passive and astonished spectator of the communication
of spiritual gifts to Gentile converts, and could only say, 'Forasmuch,
then, as God gave them the like gift, as He did unto us, what was I
that I could withstand God?' Peter, the leader of the Twelve!

Their task was apparently a humbler, really a far more important one.
Their place was apparently a lowlier, really a loftier one. They had to
lay broad and deep the basis for all the growth and grace of the
Church, in the facts which they witnessed. Their work abides; and when
the Celestial City is revealed to our longing hearts, in its
foundations will be read 'the names of the twelve Apostles of the
Lamb.' Their office was testimony; and their testimony was to this
effect--'Hearken, we eleven men knew this Jesus. Some of us knew Him
when He was a boy, and lived beside that little village where He was
brought up. We were with Him for three whole years in close contact day
and night. We all of us, though we were cowards, stood afar off with a
handful of women when He was crucified. We saw Him dead. We saw His
grave. We saw Him living, and we touched Him, and handled Him, and He
ate and drank with us; and we, sinners that we are that tell it you, we
went out with Him to the top of Olivet, and we saw Him go up into the
skies. Do you believe us or do you not? We do not come in the first
place to preach doctrines. We are not thinkers or moralists. We are
plain men, telling a plain story, to the truth of which we pledge our
senses. We do not want compliments about our spiritual elevation, or
our pure morality. We do not want reverence as possessors of mysterious
and exclusive powers. We want you to believe us as honest men, relating
what we have seen. There are eleven of us, and there are five hundred
at our back, and we have all got the one simple story to tell. It is,
indeed, a gospel, a philosophy, a theology, the reconciliation of earth
and heaven, the revelation of God to man, and of man to himself, the
unveiling of the future world, the basis of hope; but we bring it to
you first as a thing that happened upon this earth of ours, which we
saw with our eyes, and of which we are the witnesses.'

To that work there can be no successors. Some of the Apostles were
inspired to be the writers of the authoritative fountains of religious
truth; but that gift did not belong to them all, and was not the
distinctive possession of the Twelve. The power of working miracles,
and of communicating supernatural gifts, was not confined to them, but
is found exercised by other believers, as well as by a whole
'presbytery.' And as for what was properly their task, and their
qualifications, there can be no succession, for there is nothing to
succeed to, but what cannot be transmitted--the sight of the risen
Saviour, and the witness to His Resurrection as a fact certified by
their senses.

II. The sufficiency of the testimony.

Peter regards (as does the whole New Testament, and as did Peter's
Master, when He appointed these men) the witness which he and his
fellows bore as enough to lay firm and deep the historical fact of the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The first point that I would suggest here is this: if we think of
Christianity as being mainly a set of truths--spiritual, moral,
intellectual--then, of course, the way to prove Christianity is to show
the consistency of that body of truths with one another, their
consistency with other truths, their derivation from admitted
principles, their reasonableness, their adaptation to men's nature, the
refining and elevating effects of their adoption, and so on. If we
think of Christianity, on the other hand, as being first a set of
historical facts which carry the doctrines, then the way to prove
Christianity is not to show how reasonable it is, not to show how it
has been anticipated and expected and desired, not to show how it
corresponds with men's needs and men's longings, not to show what large
and blessed results follow from its acceptance. All these are
legitimate ways of establishing principles; but the way to establish a
fact is only one--that is, to find somebody that can say, 'I know it,
for I saw it.'

And my belief is that the course of modern 'apologetics,' as they are
called--methods of defending Christianity--has followed too slavishly
the devious course of modern antagonism, and has departed from its real
stronghold when it has consented to argue the question on these (as I
take them to be) lower and less sufficing grounds. I am thankful to
adopt all that wise Christian apologists may have said in regard to the
reasonableness of Christianity; its correspondence with men's wants,
the blessings that follow from it, and so forth; but the Gospel is
first and foremost a history, and you cannot prove that a thing has
happened by showing how very desirable it is that it should happen, how
reasonable it is to expect that it should happen, what good results
would follow from believing that it has happened--all that is
irrelevant. Think of it as first a history, and then you are shut up to
the old-fashioned line of evidence, irrefragable as I take it to be, to
which all these others may afterwards be appended as confirmatory. It
is true, because sufficient eye-witnesses assert it. It did happen,
because it is commended to us by the ordinary canons of evidence which
we accept in regard to all other matters of fact.

With regard to the sufficiency of the specific evidence here, I wish to
make only one or two observations.

Suppose you yield up everything that the most craving and unreasonable
modern scepticism can demand as to the date and authorship of these
tracts that make the New Testament, we have still left four letters of
the Apostle Paul, which no one has ever denied, which the very
extremest professors of the 'higher criticism' themselves accept. These
four are the Epistles to the Romans, the first and second to the
Corinthians, and that to the Galatians. The dates which are assigned to
these four letters by any one, believer or unbeliever, bring them
within five-and-twenty years of the alleged date of Christ's
resurrection.

Then what do we find in these undeniably and admittedly genuine
letters, written a quarter of a century after the supposed fact? We
find in all of them reference to it--the distinct allegation of it. We
find in one of them that the Apostle states it as being the substance
of his preaching and of his brethren's preaching, that 'Christ died and
rose again according to the Scriptures,' and that He was seen by
individuals, by multitudes, by a whole five hundred, the greater
portion of whom were living and available as witnesses when he wrote.

And we find that side by side with this statement, there is the
reference to his own vision of the risen Saviour, which carries us up
within ten years of the alleged fact. So, then, by the evidence of
admittedly genuine documents, which are dealing with a state of things
ten years after the supposed resurrection, there was a unanimous
concurrence of belief on the part of the whole primitive Church, so
that even the heretics who said that there was no resurrection of the
dead could be argued with on the ground of their belief in Christ's
Resurrection. The whole Church with one voice asserted it. And there
were hundreds of living men ready to attest it. It was not a handful of
women who fancied they had seen Him once, very early in the dim
twilight of a spring morning--but it was half a thousand that had
beheld Him. He had been seen by them not once, but often; not far off,
but close at hand; not in one place, but in Galilee and Jerusalem; not
under one set of circumstances, but at all hours of the day, abroad and
in the house, walking and sitting, speaking and eating, by them singly
and in numbers. He had not been seen only by excited expectants of His
appearance, but by incredulous eyes and surprised hearts, who doubted
ere they worshipped, and paused before they said, 'My Lord and my God!'
They neither hoped that He would rise, nor believed that He had risen;
and the world may be thankful that they were 'slow of heart to believe.'

Would not the testimony which can be alleged for Christ's Resurrection
be enough to guarantee any event but this? And if so, why is it not
enough to guarantee this too? If, as nobody denies, the Early Church,
within ten years of Christ's Resurrection, believed in His
Resurrection, and were ready to go, and did, many of them, go to the
death in assertion of their veracity in declaring it, then one of two
things--Either they were right or they were wrong; and if the latter,
one of two things--If the Resurrection be not a fact, then that belief
was either a delusion or a deceit.

It was not a delusion, for such an illusion is altogether unexampled;
and it is absurd to think of it as being shared by a multitude like the
Early Church. Nations have said, 'Our King is not dead--he is gone away
and he will come back.' Loving disciples have said, 'Our Teacher lives
in solitude and will return to us.' But this is no parallel to these.
This is not a fond imagination giving an apparent substance to its own
creation, but sense recognising first the fact, 'He _is_ dead,' and
then, in opposition to expectation, and when hope had sickened to
despair, recognising the astounding fact, 'He liveth that was dead';
and to suppose that that should have been the rooted conviction of
hundreds of men who were not idiots, finds no parallel in the history
of human illusions, and no analogy in such legends as those to which I
have referred.

It was not a myth, for a myth does not grow in ten years. And there was
no motive to frame one, if Christ was dead and all was over. It was not
a deceit, for the character of the men, and the character of the
associated morality, and the obvious absence of all self-interest, and
the persecutions and sorrows which they endured, make it inconceivable
that the fairest building that ever hath been reared in the world, and
which is cemented by men's blood, should be built upon the mud and
slime of a conscious deceit!

And all this we are asked to put aside at the bidding of a glaring
begging of the whole question, and an outrageous assertion which no man
that believes in a God at all can logically maintain, viz. that no
testimony can reach to the miraculous, or that miracles are impossible.

No testimony reach to the miraculous! Well, put it into a concrete
form. Can testimony not reach to this: 'I know, because I saw, that a
man was dead; I know, because I saw, a dead man live again'? If
testimony can do that, I think we may safely leave the verbal sophism
that it cannot reach to the miraculous to take care of itself.

And, then, with regard to the other assumption--miracle is impossible.
That is an illogical begging of the whole question in dispute. It
cannot avail to brush aside testimony. You cannot smother facts by
theories in that fashion. Again, one would like to know how it comes
that our modern men of science, who protest so much against science
being corrupted by metaphysics, should commit themselves to an
assertion like that? Surely that is stark, staring metaphysics. It
seems as if they thought that the 'metaphysics' which said that there
was anything behind the physical universe was unscientific; but that
the metaphysics which said that there was nothing behind physics was
quite legitimate, and ought to be allowed to pass muster. What have the
votaries of pure physical science, who hold the barren word-contests of
theology and the proud pretensions of philosophy in such contempt, to
do out-Heroding Herod in that fashion, and venturing on metaphysical
assertions of such a sort? Let them keep to their own line, and tell us
all that crucibles and scalpels can reveal, and we will listen as
becomes us. But when they contradict their own principles in order to
deny the possibility of miracle, we need only give them back their own
words, and ask that the investigation of facts shall not be hampered
and clogged with metaphysical prejudices. No! no! Christ made no
mistake when He built His Church upon that rock--the historical
evidence of a resurrection from the dead, though all the wise men of
Areopagus hill may make its cliffs ring with mocking laughter when we
say, upon Easter morning, 'The Lord is risen indeed!'

III. There is a final consideration connected with these words, which I
must deal with very briefly--the importance of the fact which is thus
borne witness to.

I have already pointed out that the Resurrection of Christ is viewed in
Scripture in three aspects: in its bearing upon His nature and work, as
a pattern for our future, and as a symbol of our present newness of
life. The importance to which I refer now applies only to that first
aspect.

With the Resurrection of Jesus Christ stands or falls the Divinity of
Christ. As Paul said, in that letter to which I have referred,
'Declared to be the Son of God, with power by the resurrection from the
dead.' As Peter said in the sermon that follows this one of our text,
'God hath made this same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and
Christ.' As Paul said, on Mars Hill, 'He will judge the world in
righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given
assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.'

The case is this. Jesus lived as we know, and in the course of that
life claimed to be the Son of God. He made such broad and strange
assertions as these--'I and My Father are One.' 'I am the Way, and the
Truth, and the Life.' 'I am the Resurrection and the Life.' 'He that
believeth on Me shall never die.' 'The Son of Man must suffer many
things, and the third day He shall rise again.' Thus speaking He dies,
and rises again and passes into the heavens. That is the last mightiest
utterance of the same testimony, which spake from heaven at His
baptism, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!' If He be
risen from the dead, then His loftiest claims are confirmed from the
throne, and we can see in Him, the Son of God. But if death holds Him
still, and 'the Syrian stars look down upon His grave,' as a modern
poet tells us in his dainty English that they do, then what becomes of
these words of His, and of our estimate of the character of Him, the
speaker? Let us hear no more about the pure morality of Jesus Christ,
and the beauty of His calm and lofty teaching, and the rest of it. Take
away His resurrection from the dead, and we have left beautiful
precepts, and fair wisdom, deformed with a monstrous self-assertion and
the constant reiteration of claims which the event proves to have been
baseless. Either He has risen from the dead or His words were
blasphemy. Men nowadays talk very lightly of throwing aside the
supernatural portions of the Gospel history, and retaining reverence
for the great Teacher, the pure moralist of Nazareth. The Pharisees put
the issue more coarsely and truly when they said, 'That deceiver said,
while He was yet alive, after three days I will rise again.' Yes! one
or the other. 'Declared to be the Son of God with power by the
resurrection from the dead,' or--that which our lips refuse to say even
as a hypothesis!

Still further, with the Resurrection stands or falls Christ's whole
work for our redemption. If He died, like other men--if that awful bony
hand has got its grip upon Him too, then we have no proof that the
cross was anything but a martyr's cross. His Resurrection is the proof
of His completed work of redemption. It is the proof--followed as it is
by His Ascension--that His death was not the tribute which for Himself
He had to pay, but the ransom for us. His Resurrection is the condition
of His present activity. If He has not risen, He has not put away sin;
and if He has not put it away by the sacrifice of Himself, none has,
and it remains. We come back to the old dreary alternative: 'if Christ
be not risen, your faith is vain, and our preaching is vain. Ye are yet
in your sins, and they which have fallen asleep in Christ' with
unfulfilled hopes fixed upon a baseless vision--they of whom we hoped,
through our tears, that they live with Him--they 'are perished.' For,
if He be not risen, there is no resurrection; and, if He be not risen,
there is no forgiveness; and, if He be not risen, there is no Son of
God; and the world is desolate, and the heaven is empty, and the grave
is dark, and sin abides, and death is eternal. If Christ be dead, then
that awful vision is true, 'As I looked up into the immeasurable
heavens for the Divine Eye, it froze me with an empty, bottomless
eye-socket.'

There is nothing between us and darkness, despair, death, but that
ancient message, 'I declare unto you the Gospel which I preach, by
which ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, how
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He
was raised the third day according to the Scriptures.'

Well, then, may we take up the ancient glad salutation, 'The Lord is
risen!' and, turning from these thoughts of the disaster and despair
that that awful supposition drags after it, fall back upon sober
certainty, and with the Apostle break forth in triumph, 'Now is Christ
risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept'!



THE ABIDING GIFT AND ITS TRANSITORY ACCOMPANIMENTS

'And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one
accord in one place. 2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as
of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were
sitting. 3. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of
fire, and it sat upon each of them. 4. And they were all filled with
the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit
gave them utterance. 5. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews,
devout men, out of every nation under heaven. 6. Now when this was
noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded,
because that every man heard them speak in his own language. 7. And
they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are
not all these which speak Galileans? 8. And how we hear every man in
our own tongue, wherein we were born? 9. Parthians, and Medes, and
Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and
Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, 10. Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt,
and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and
proselytes. 11. Cretes, and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our
tongues the wonderful works of God. 12. And they were all amazed, and
were in doubt, saying one to another, What meaneth this? 13. Others,
mocking, said, These men are full of new wine.'--ACTS ii. 1-13.

Only ten days elapsed between the Ascension and Pentecost. The attitude
of the Church during that time should be carefully noted. They obeyed
implicitly Christ's command to wait for the 'power from on high.' The
only act recorded is the election of Matthias to fill Judas's place,
and it is at least questionable whether that was not a mistake, and
shown to be such by Christ's subsequent choice of Paul as an Apostle.
But, with the exception of that one flash of doubtful activity, prayer,
supplication, patient waiting, and clinging together in harmonious
expectancy, characterised the hundred and twenty brethren.

They must have been wrought to an intense pitch of anticipation, for
they knew that their waiting was to be short, and they knew, at least
partially, what they were to receive, namely, 'power from on high,' or
'the promise of the Father.' Probably, too, the great Feast, so near at
hand, would appear to them a likely time for the fulfilment of the
promise.

So, very early on that day of Pentecost, they betook themselves to
their usual place of assembling, probably the 'large upper room,'
already hallowed to their memories; and in each heart the eager
question would spring, 'Will it be to-day?' It is as true now as it was
then, that the spirits into whom the Holy Spirit breathes His power
must keep themselves still, expectant, prayerful. Perpetual occupation
may be more loss of time than devout waiting, with hands folded,
because the heart is wide open to receive the power which will fit the
hands for better work.

It was but 'the third hour of the day' when Peter stood up to speak; it
must have been little after dawn when the brethren came together. How
long they had been assembled we do not know, but we cannot doubt how
they had been occupied. Many a prayer had gone up through the morning
air, and, no doubt, some voice was breathing the united desires, when a
deep, strange sound was heard at a distance, and rapidly gained volume,
and was heard to draw near. Like the roaring of a tempest hurrying
towards them, it hushed human voices, and each man would feel, 'Surely
now the Gift comes!' Nearer and nearer it approached, and at last burst
into the chamber where they sat silent and unmoving.

But if we look carefully at Luke's words, we see that what filled the
house was not agitated air, or wind, but 'a sound as of wind.' The
language implies that there was no rush of atmosphere that lifted a
hair on any cheek, or blew on any face, but only such a sound as is
made by tempest. It suggested wind, but it was not wind. By that first
symbolic preparation for the communication of the promised gift, the
old symbolism which lies in the very word 'Spirit,' and had been
brought anew to the disciples' remembrance by Christ's words to
Nicodemus, and by His breathing on them when He gave them an
anticipatory and partial bestowment of the Spirit, is brought to view,
with its associations of life-giving power and liberty. 'Thou hearest
the sound thereof,' could scarcely fail to be remembered by some in
that chamber.

But it is not to be supposed that the audible symbol continued when the
second preparatory one, addressed to the eye, appeared. As the former
had been not wind, but like it, the latter was not fire, but 'as of
fire.' The language does not answer the question whether what was seen
was a mass from which the tongues detached themselves, or whether only
the separate tongues were visible as they moved overhead. But the final
result was that 'it sat on each.' The verb has no expressed subject,
and 'fire' cannot be the subject, for it is only introduced as a
comparison. Probably, therefore, we are to understand 'a tongue' as the
unexpressed subject of the verb.

Clearly, the point of the symbol is the same as that presented in the
Baptist's promise of a baptism 'with the Holy Ghost and fire.' The
Spirit was to be in them as a Spirit of burning, thawing natural
coldness and melting hearts with a genial warmth, which should beget
flaming enthusiasm, fervent love, burning zeal, and should work
transformation into its own fiery substance. The rejoicing power, the
quick energy, the consuming force, the assimilating action of fire, are
all included in the symbol, and should all be possessed by Christ's
disciples.

But were the tongue-like shapes of the flames significant too? It is
doubtful, for, natural as is the supposition that they were, it is to
be remembered that 'tongues of fire' is a usual expression, and may
mean nothing more than the flickering shoots of flame into which a fire
necessarily parts.

But these two symbols are only symbols. The true fulfilment of the
great promise follows. Mark the brief simplicity of the quiet words in
which the greatest bestowment ever made on humanity, the beginning of
an altogether new era, the equipment of the Church for her age-long
conflict, is told. There was an actual impartation to men of a divine
life, to dwell in them and actuate them; to bring all good to victory
in them; to illuminate, sustain, direct, and elevate; to cleanse and
quicken. The gift was complete. They were 'filled.' No doubt they had
much more to receive, and they received it, as their natures became, by
faithful obedience to the indwelling Spirit, capable of more. But up to
the measure of their then capacities they were filled; and, since their
spirits were expansible, and the gift was infinite, they were in a
position to grow steadily in possession of it, till they were 'filled
with all the fulness of God.'

Further, 'they were _all_ filled,'--not the Apostles only, but the
whole hundred and twenty. Peter's quotation from Joel distinctly
implies the universality of the gift, which the 'servants and
handmaidens,' the brethren and the women, now received. Herein is the
true democracy of Christianity. There are still diversities of
operations and degrees of possession, but all Christians have the
Spirit. All 'they that believe on Him,' and only they, have received
it. Of old the light shone only on the highest peaks,--prophets, and
kings, and psalmists; now the lowest depths of the valleys are flooded
with it. Would that Christians generally believed more fully in, and
set more store by, that great gift!

As symbols preceded, tokens followed. The essential fact of Pentecost
is neither the sound and fire, nor the speaking with other tongues, but
the communication of the Holy Spirit. The sign and result of that was
the gift of utterance in various languages, not their own, nor learned
by ordinary ways. No twisting of the narrative can weaken the plain
meaning of it, that these unlearned Galileans spake in tongues which
their users recognised to be their own. The significance of the fact
will appear presently, but first note the attestation of it by the
multitude.

Of course, the foreign-born Jews, who, from motives of piety, however
mistaken, had come to dwell in Jerusalem, are said to have been 'from
every nation under heaven,' by an obvious and ordinary license. It is
enough that, as the subsequent catalogue shows, they came from all
corners of the then known world, though the extremes of territory
mentioned cover but a small space on a terrestrial globe.

The 'sound' of the rushing wind had been heard hurtling through the
city in the early morning hours, and had served as guide to the spot. A
curious crowd came hurrying to ascertain what this noise of tempest in
a calm meant, and they were met by something more extraordinary still.
Try to imagine the spectacle. As would appear from verse 33, the
tongues of fire remained lambently glowing on each head ('which ye
see'), and the whole hundred and twenty, thus strangely crowned, were
pouring out rapturous praises, each in some strange tongue. When the
astonished ears had become accustomed to the apparent tumult, every man
in the crowd heard some one or more speaking in his own tongue,
language, or dialect, and all were declaring the mighty works of God;
that is, probably, the story of the crucified, ascended Jesus.

We need not dwell on subordinate questions, as to the number of
languages represented there, or as to the catalogue in verses 9 and 10.
But we would emphasise two thoughts. First, the natural result of being
filled with God's Spirit is utterance of the great truths of Christ's
Gospel. As surely as light radiates, as surely as any deep emotion
demands expression, so certainly will a soul filled with the Spirit be
forced to break into speech. If professing Christians have never known
the impulse to tell of the Christ whom they have found, their religion
must be very shallow and imperfect. If their spirits are full, they
will overflow in speech.

Second, Pentecost is a prophecy of the universal proclamation of the
Gospel, and of the universal praise which shall one day rise to Him
that was slain. 'This company of brethren praising God in the tongues
of the whole world represented the whole world which shall one day
praise God in its various tongues' (Bengel). Pentecost reversed Babel,
not by bringing about a featureless monopoly, but by consecrating
diversity, and showing that each language could be hallowed, and that
each lent some new strain of music to the chorus.

It prophesied of the time when 'men of every tribe, and tongue, and
people, and nation' should lift up their voices to Him who has
purchased them unto God with His blood. It began a communication of the
Spirit to all believers which is never to cease while the world stands.
The mighty rushing sound has died into silence, the fiery tongues rest
on no heads now, the miraculous results of the gifts of the Spirit have
passed away also, but the gift remains, and the Spirit of God abides
for ever with the Church of Christ.



THE FOURFOLD SYMBOLS OF THE SPIRIT

'A rushing mighty wind.' ... 'Cloven tongues like as of fire.' ... 'I
will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh.'--ACTS ii. 2, 3, 17.

'Ye have an unction from the Holy One.'--1 JOHN ii. 20.

Wind, fire, water, oil,--these four are constant Scriptural symbols for
the Spirit of God. We have them all in these fragments of verses which
I have taken for my text now, and which I have isolated from their
context for the purpose of bringing out simply these symbolical
references. I think that perhaps we may get some force and freshness to
the thoughts proper to this day [Footnote: Whit Sunday.] by looking at
these rather than by treating the subject in some more abstract form.
We have then the Breath of the Spirit, the Fire of the Spirit, the
Water of the Spirit, and the Anointing Oil of the Spirit. And the
consideration of these four will bring out a great many of the
principal Scriptural ideas about the gift of the Spirit of God which
belongs to all Christian souls.

I. First, 'a rushing mighty wind.'

Of course, the symbol is but the putting into picturesque form of the
idea that lies in the name. 'Spirit' is 'breath.' Wind is but air in
motion. Breath is the synonym for life. 'Spirit' and 'life' are two
words for one thing. So then, in the symbol, the 'rushing mighty wind,'
we have set forth the highest work of the Spirit--the communication of
a new and supernatural life.

We are carried hack to that grand vision of the prophet who saw the
bones lying, very many and very dry, sapless and disintegrated, a heap
dead and ready to rot. The question comes to him: 'Son of man! Can
these bones live?' The only possible answer, if he consult experience,
is, 'O Lord God! Thou knowest.' Then follows the great invocation:
'Come from the four winds, O Breath! and breathe upon these slain that
they may live.' And the Breath comes and 'they stand up, an exceeding
great army.' 'It is the Spirit that quickeneth.' The Scripture treats
us all as dead, being separated from God, unless we are united to Him
by faith in Jesus Christ. According to the saying of the Evangelist,
'They which believe on Him receive' the Spirit, and thereby receive the
life which He gives, or, as our Lord Himself speaks, are 'born of the
Spirit.' The highest and most characteristic office of the Spirit of
God is to enkindle this new life, and hence His noblest name, among the
many by which He is called, is the Spirit of life.

Again, remember, 'that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.' If there
be life given it must be kindred with the life which is its source.
Reflect upon those profound words of our Lord: 'The wind bloweth where
it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell
whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. So is every one that is born of
the Spirit.' They describe first the operation of the life-giving
Spirit, but they describe also the characteristics of the resulting
life.

'The wind bloweth where it listeth.' That spiritual life, both in the
divine source and in the human recipient, is its own law. Of course the
wind has its laws, as every physical agent has; but these are so
complicated and undiscovered that it has always been the very symbol of
freedom, and poets have spoken of these 'chartered libertines,' the
winds, and 'free as the air' has become a proverb. So that Divine
Spirit is limited by no human conditions or laws, but dispenses His
gifts in superb disregard of conventionalities and externalisms. Just
as the lower gift of what we call 'genius' is above all limits of
culture or education or position, and falls on a wool-stapler in
Stratford-on-Avon, or on a ploughman in Ayrshire, so, in a similar
manner, the altogether different gift of the divine, life-giving Spirit
follows no lines that Churches or institutions draw. It falls upon an
Augustinian monk in a convent, and he shakes Europe. It falls upon a
tinker in Bedford gaol, and he writes _Pilgrim's Progress_. It falls
upon a cobbler in Kettering, and he founds modern Christian missions.
It blows 'where it listeth,' sovereignly indifferent to the
expectations and limitations and the externalisms, even of organised
Christianity, and touching this man and that man, not arbitrarily but
according to 'the good pleasure' that is a law to itself, because it is
perfect in wisdom and in goodness.

And as thus the life-giving Spirit imparts Himself according to higher
laws than we can grasp, so in like manner the life that is derived from
it is a life which is its own law. The Christian conscience, touched by
the Spirit of God, owes allegiance to no regulations or external
commandments laid down by man. The Christian conscience, enlightened by
the Spirit of God, at its peril will take its beliefs from any other
than from that Divine Spirit. All authority over conduct, all authority
over belief is burnt up and disappears in the presence of the grand
democracy of the true Christian principle: 'Ye are all the children of
God by faith in Jesus Christ'; and every one of you possesses the
Spirit which teaches, the Spirit which inspires, the Spirit which
enlightens, the Spirit which is the guide to all truth. So 'the wind
bloweth where it listeth,' and the voice of that Divine Quickener is,

  'Myself shall to My darling be
    Both law and impulse.'

Under the impulse derived from the Divine Spirit, the human spirit
'listeth' what is right, and is bound to follow the promptings of its
highest desires. Those men only are free as the air we breathe, who are
vitalised by the Spirit of the Lord, for 'where the Spirit of the Lord
is, there,' and there alone, 'is liberty.'

In this symbol there lies not only the thought of a life derived,
kindred with the life bestowed, and free like the life which is given,
but there lies also the idea of power. The wind which filled the house
was not only mighty but 'borne onward'--fitting type of the strong
impulse by which in olden times 'holy men spake as they were "borne
onward"' (the word is the same) 'by the Holy Ghost.' There are
diversities of operations, but it is the same breath of God, which
sometimes blows in the softest _pianissimo_ that scarcely rustles the
summer woods in the leafy month of June, and sometimes storms in wild
tempest that dashes the seas against the rocks. So this mighty
life-giving Agent moves in gentleness and yet in power, and sometimes
swells and rises almost to tempest, but is ever the impelling force of
all that is strong and true and fair in Christian hearts and lives.

The history of the world, since that day of Pentecost, has been a
commentary upon the words of my text. With viewless, impalpable energy,
the mighty breath of God swept across the ancient world and 'laid the
lofty city' of paganism 'low; even to the ground, and brought it even
to the dust.' A breath passed over the whole civilised world, like the
breath of the west wind upon the glaciers in the spring, melting the
thick-ribbed ice, and wooing forth the flowers, and the world was made
over again. In our own hearts and lives this is the one Power that will
make us strong and good. The question is all-important for each of us,
'Have I this life, and does it move me, as the ships are borne along by
the wind?' 'As many as are impelled by the Spirit of God,
they'--_they_--'are the sons of God.' Is that the breath that swells
all the sails of your lives, and drives you upon your course? If it be,
you are Christians; if it be not, you are not.

II. And now a word as to the second of these symbols--'Cloven tongues
as of fire'--the fire of the Spirit.

I need not do more than remind you how frequently that emblem is
employed both in the Old and in the New Testament. John the Baptist
contrasted the cold negative efficiency of his baptism, which at its
best, was but a baptism of repentance, with the quickening power of the
baptism of Him who was to follow him; when he said, 'I indeed baptise
you with water, but He that cometh after me is mightier than I. He
shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.' The two words
mean but one thing, the fire being the emblem of the Spirit.

You will remember, too, how our Lord Himself employs the same metaphor
when He speaks about His coming to bring fire on the earth, and His
longing to see it kindled into a beneficent blaze. In this connection
the fire is a symbol of a quick, triumphant energy, which will
transform us into its own likeness. There are two sides to that emblem:
one destructive, one creative; one wrathful, one loving. There are the
fire of love, and the fire of anger. There is the fire of the sunshine
which is the condition of life, as well as the fire of the lightning
which burns and consumes. The emblem of fire is selected to express the
work of the Spirit of God, by reason of its leaping, triumphant,
transforming energy. See, for instance, how, when you kindle a pile of
dead green-wood, the tongues of fire spring from point to point until
they have conquered the whole mass, and turned it all into a ruddy
likeness of the parent flame. And so here, this fire of God, if it fall
upon you, will burn up all your coldness, and will make you glow with
enthusiasm, working your intellectual convictions in fire not in frost,
making your creed a living power in your lives, and kindling you into a
flame of earnest consecration.

The same idea is expressed by the common phrases of every language. We
speak of the fervour of love, the warmth of affection, the blaze of
enthusiasm, the fire of emotion, the coldness of indifference.
Christians are to be set on fire of God. If the Spirit dwell in us, He
will make us fiery like Himself, even as fire turns the wettest
green-wood into fire. We have more than enough of cold Christians who
are afraid of nothing so much as of being betrayed into warm emotion.

I believe, dear brethren, and I am bound to express the belief, that
one of the chief wants of the Christian Church of this generation, the
Christian Church of this city, the Christian Church of this chapel, is
more of the fire of God! We are all icebergs compared with what we
ought to be. Look at yourselves; never mind about your brethren. Let
each of us look at his own heart, and say whether there is any trace in
his Christianity of the power of that Spirit who is fire. Is our
religion flame or ice? Where among us are to be found lives blazing
with enthusiastic devotion and earnest love? Do not such words sound
like mockery when applied to us? Have we not to listen to that solemn
old warning that never loses its power, and, alas! seems never to lose
its appropriateness: 'Because thou art neither cold nor hot, I will
spue thee out of My mouth.' We ought to be like the burning beings
before God's throne, the seraphim, the spirits that blaze and serve. We
ought to be like God Himself, all aflame with love. Let us seek
penitently for that Spirit of fire who will dwell in us all if we will.

The metaphor of fire suggests also--purifying. 'The Spirit of burning'
will burn the filth out of us. That is the only way by which a man can
ever be made clean. You may wash and wash and wash with the cold water
of moral reformation, you will never get the dirt out with it. No
washing and no rubbing will ever cleanse sin. The way to purge a soul
is to do with it as they do with foul clay--thrust it into the fire and
that will burn all the blackness out of it. Get the love of God into
your hearts, and the fire of His Divine Spirit into your spirits to
melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross will come to
the top, and you can skim them off. Two powers conquer my sin: the one
is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from all the guilt of the
past; the other is the fiery influence of that Divine Spirit which
makes me pure and clean for all the time to come. Pray to be kindled
with the fire of God.

III. Then once more, take that other metaphor, 'I will pour out of My
Spirit.'

That implies an emblem which is very frequently used, both in the Old
and in the New Testament, viz., the Spirit as water. As our Lord said
to Nicodemus: 'Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' The 'water' stands in the same
relation to the 'Spirit' as the 'fire' does in the saying of John the
Baptist already referred to--that is to say, it is simply a symbol or
material emblem of the Spirit. I suppose nobody would say that there
were two baptisms spoken of by John, one of the Holy Ghost and one of
fire,--and I suppose that just in the same way, there are not two
agents of regeneration pointed at in our Lord's words, nor even two
conditions, but that the Spirit is the sole agent, and 'water' is but a
figure to express some aspect of His operations. So that there is no
reference to the water of baptism in the words, and to see such a
reference is to be led astray by sound, and out of a metaphor to
manufacture a miracle.

There are other passages where, in like manner, the Spirit is compared
to a flowing stream, such as, for instance, when our Lord said, 'He
that believeth on Me, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water,' and when John saw a 'river of water of life proceeding from the
throne.' The expressions, too, of 'pouring out' and 'shedding forth'
the Spirit, point in the same direction, and are drawn from more than
one passage of Old Testament prophecy. What, then, is the significance
of comparing that Divine Spirit with a river of water? First,
cleansing, of which I need not say any more, because I have dealt with
It in the previous part of my sermon. Then, further, refreshing, and
satisfying. Ah! dear brethren, there is only one thing that will slake
the immortal thirst in your souls. The world will never do it; love or
ambition gratified and wealth possessed, will never do it. You will be
as thirsty after you have drunk of these streams as ever you were
before. There is one spring 'of which if a man drink, he shall never
thirst' with unsatisfied, painful longings, but shall never cease to
thirst with the longing which is blessedness, because it is fruition.
Our thirst can be slaked by the deep draught of 'the river of the Water
of Life, which proceeds from the Throne of God and the Lamb.' The
Spirit of God, drunk in by my spirit, will still and satisfy my whole
nature, and with it I shall be glad. Drink of this. 'Ho! every one that
thirsteth, come ye to the waters!'

The Spirit is not only refreshing and satisfying, but also productive
and fertilising. In Eastern lands a rill of water is all that is needed
to make the wilderness rejoice. Turn that stream on to the barrenness
of your hearts, and fair flowers will grow that would never grow
without it. The one means of lofty and fruitful Christian living is a
deep, inward possession of the Spirit of God. The one way to fertilise
barren souls is to let that stream flood them all over, and then the
flush of green will soon come, and that which is else a desert will
'rejoice and blossom as the rose.'

So this water will cleanse, it will satisfy and refresh, it will be
productive and will fertilise, and 'everything shall live whithersoever
that river cometh.'

IV. Then, lastly, we have the oil of the Spirit.

'Ye have an unction,' says St. John in our last text, 'from the Holy
One.' I need not remind you, I suppose, of how in the old system,
prophets, priests, and kings were anointed with consecrating oil, as a
symbol of their calling, and of their fitness for their special
offices. The reason for the use of such a symbol, I presume, would lie
in the invigorating and in the supposed, and possibly real,
health-giving effect of the use of oil in those climates. Whatever may
have been the reason for the use of oil in official anointings, the
meaning of the act was plain. It was a preparation for a specific and
distinct service. And so, when we read of the oil of the Spirit, we are
to think that it is that which fits us for being prophets, priests, and
kings, and which calls us to, because it fits us for, these functions.

You are anointed to be prophets that you may make known Him who has
loved and saved you, and may go about the world evidently inspired to
show forth His praise, and make His name glorious. That anointing calls
and fits you to be priests, mediators between God and man, bringing God
to men, and by pleading and persuasion, and the presentation of the
truth, drawing men to God. That unction calls and fits you to be kings,
exercising authority over the little monarchy of your own natures, and
over the men round you, who will bow in submission whenever they come
in contact with a man all evidently aflame with the love of Jesus
Christ, and filled with His Spirit. The world is hard and rude; the
world is blind and stupid; the world often fails to know its best
friends and its truest benefactors; but there is no crust of stupidity
so crass and dense but that through it there will pass the penetrating
shafts of light that ray from the face of a man who walks in fellowship
with Jesus. The whole nation of old was honoured with these sacred
names. They were a kingdom of priests; and the divine Voice said of the
nation, 'Touch not Mine anointed, and do My prophets no harm!' How much
more are all Christian men, by the anointing of the Holy Spirit, made
prophets, priests, and kings to God! Alas for the difference between
what they ought to be and what they are!

And then, do not forget also that when the Scriptures speak of
Christian men as being anointed, it really speaks of them as being
Messiahs. 'Christ' means _anointed_, does it not? 'Messiah' means
_anointed_. And when we read in such a passage as that of my text, 'Ye
have an unction from the Holy One,' we cannot but feel that the words
point in the same direction as the great words of our Master Himself,
'As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.' By authority derived,
no doubt, and in a subordinate and secondary sense, of course, we are
Messiahs, anointed with that Spirit which was given to Him, not by
measure, and which has passed from Him to us. 'If any man have not the
Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.'

So, dear brethren, all these things being certainly so, what are we to
say about the present state of Christendom? What are we to say about
the present state of English Christianity, Church and Dissent alike? Is
Pentecost a vanished glory, then? Has that 'rushing mighty wind' blown
itself out, and a dead calm followed? Has that leaping fire died down
into grey ashes? Has the great river that burst out then, like the
stream from the foot of the glaciers of Mont Blanc, full-grown in its
birth, been all swallowed up in the sand, like some of those rivers in
the East? Has the oil dried in the cruse? People tell us that
Christianity is on its death-bed; and the aspect of a great many
professing Christians seems to confirm the statement. But let us
thankfully recognise that 'we are not straitened in God, but in
ourselves.' To how many of us the question might be put: 'Did you
receive the Holy Ghost when you believed?' And how many of us by our
lives answer: 'We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy
Ghost.' Let us go where we can receive Him; and remember the blessed
words: 'If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit
to them that ask Him'!



PETER'S FIRST SERMON

'This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. 33.
Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received
of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this,
which ye now see and hear. 34. For David is not ascended into the
heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on
My right hand, 35. Until I make Thy foes Thy footstool. 36. Therefore
let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that
same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. 37. Now when
they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter
and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?
38. Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you
in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. 39. For the promise is unto you,
and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the
Lord our God shall call. 40. And with many other words did he testify
and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation. 41.
Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day
there were added unto them about three thousand souls. 42. And they
continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in
breaking of bread, and in prayers. 43. And fear came upon every soul:
and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles. 44. And all that
believed were together, and had all things common; 45. And sold their
possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had
need. 46. And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and
breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness
and singleness of heart, 47. Praising God, and having favour with all
the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be
saved.'--ACTS ii. 32-47.

This passage may best be dealt with as divided into three parts: the
sharp spear-thrust of Peter's closing words (vs. 32-36), the wounded
and healed hearers (vs. 37-41), and the fair morning dawn of the Church
(vs. 42-47).

I. Peter's address begins with pointing out the fulfilment of prophecy
in the gift of the Spirit (vs. 14-21). It then declares the
Resurrection of Jesus as foretold by prophecy, and witnessed to by the
whole body of believers (vs. 22-32), and it ends by bringing together
these two facts, the gift of the Spirit and the Resurrection and
Ascension, as effect and cause, and as establishing beyond all doubt
that Jesus is the Christ of prophecy, and the Lord on whom Joel had
declared that whoever called should be saved. We now begin with the
last verse of the second part of the address.

Observe the significant alternation of the names of 'Christ' and
'Jesus' in verses 31 and 32. The former verse establishes that prophecy
had foretold the Resurrection of the Messiah, whoever he might be; the
latter asserts that 'this Jesus' has fulfilled the prophetic
conditions. That is not a thing to be argued about, but to be attested
by competent witnesses. It was presented to the multitude on Pentecost,
as it is to us, as a plain matter of fact, on which the whole fabric of
Christianity is built, and which itself securely rests on the
concordant testimony of those who knew Him alive, saw Him dead, and
were familiar with Him risen.

There is a noble ring of certitude in Peter's affirmation, and of
confidence that the testimony producible was overwhelming. Unless Jesus
had risen, there would neither have been a Pentecost nor a Church to
receive the gift. The simple fact which Peter alleged in that first
sermon, 'whereof we all are witnesses,' is still too strong for the
deniers of the Resurrection, as their many devices to get over it prove.

But, a listener might ask, what has this witness of yours to do with
Joel's prophecy, or with this speaking with tongues? The answer follows
in the last part of the sermon. The risen Jesus has ascended up; that
is inseparable from the fact of resurrection, and is part of our
testimony. He is 'exalted by,' or, perhaps, at, 'the right hand of
God.' And that exaltation is to us the token that there He has received
from the Father the Spirit, whom He promised to send when He left us.
Therefore it is He--'this Jesus'--who has 'poured forth this,'--this
new strange gift, the tokens of which you see flaming on each head, and
hear bursting in praise from every tongue.

What triumphant emphasis is in that 'He'! Peter quotes Joel's word
'pour forth.' The prophet had said, as the mouthpiece of God, '_I_ will
pour forth'; Peter unhesitatingly transfers the word to Jesus. We must
not assume in him at this stage a fully-developed consciousness of our
Lord's divine nature, but neither must we blink the tremendous
assumption which he feels warranted in making, that the exaltation of
Jesus to the right hand of God meant His exercising the power which
belonged to God Himself.

In verse 34, he stays for a moment to establish by prophecy that the
Ascension, of which he had for the first time spoken in verse 33, is
part of the prophetic characteristics of the Messiah. His demonstration
runs parallel with his preceding one as to the Resurrection. He quotes
Psalm cx., which he had learned to do from his Master, and just as he
had argued about the prediction of Resurrection, that the dead
Psalmist's words could not apply to himself, and must therefore apply
to the Messiah; so he concludes that it was not 'David' who was called
by Jehovah to sit as 'Lord' on His right hand. If not David, it could
only be the Messiah who was thus invested with Lordship, and exalted as
participator of the throne of the Most High.

Then comes the final thrust of the spear, for which all the discourse
has been preparing. The Apostle rises to the full height of his great
commission, and sets the trumpet to his mouth, summoning 'all the house
of Israel,' priests, rulers, and all the people, to acknowledge his
Master. He proclaims his supreme dignity and Messiahship. He is the
'Lord' of whom the Psalmist sang, and the prophet declared that whoever
called on His name should be saved; and He is the Christ for whom
Israel looked.

Last of all, he sets in sharp contrast what God had done with Jesus,
and what Israel had done, and the barb of his arrow lies in the last
words, 'whom ye crucified.' And this bold champion of Jesus, this
undaunted arraigner of a nation's crimes, was the man who, a few weeks
before, had quailed before a maid-servant's saucy tongue! What made the
change? Will anything but the Resurrection and Pentecost account for
the psychological transformation effected in him and the other Apostles?

II. No wonder that 'they were pricked in their heart'! Such a thrust
must have gone deep, even where the armour of prejudice was thick. The
scene they had witnessed, and the fiery words of explanation, taken
together, produced incipient conviction, and the conviction produced
alarm. How surely does the first glimpse of Jesus as Christ and Lord
set conscience to work! The question, 'What shall we do?' is the
beginning of conversion. The acknowledgment of Jesus which does not
lead to it is shallow and worthless. The most orthodox accepter, so far
as intellect goes, of the gospel, who has not been driven by it to ask
his own duty in regard to it, and what he is to do to receive its
benefits, and to escape from his sins, has not accepted it at all.

Peter's answer lays down two conditions: repentance and baptism. The
former is often taken in too narrow a sense as meaning sorrow for sin,
whereas it means a change of disposition or mind, which will be
accompanied, no doubt, with 'godly sorrow,' but is in itself deeper
than sorrow, and is the turning away of heart and will from past love
and practice of evil. The second, baptism, is 'in the name of Jesus
Christ,' or more accurately, '_upon_ the name,'--that is, on the ground
of the revealed character of Jesus. That necessarily implies faith in
that Name; for, without such faith, the baptism would not be on the
ground of the Name. The two things are regarded as inseparable, being
the inside and the outside of the Christian discipleship. Repentance,
faith, baptism, these three, are called for by Peter.

But 'remission of sins' is not attached to the immediately preceding
clause, so as that baptism is said to secure remission, but to the
whole of what goes before in the sentence. Obedience to the
requirements would bring the same gift to the obedient as the disciples
had received; for it would make them disciples also. But, while
repentance and baptism which presupposed faith were the normal,
precedent conditions of the Spirit's bestowal, the case of Cornelius,
where the Spirit was given before baptism, forbids the attempt to link
the rite and the divine gift more closely together.

The Apostle was eager to share the gift. The more we have of the
Spirit, the more shall we desire that others may have Him, and the more
sure shall we be that He is meant for all. So Peter went on to base his
assurance, that his hearers might all possess the Spirit, on the
universal destination of the promise. Joel had said, 'on all flesh';
Peter declares that word to point downwards through all generations,
and outwards to all nations. How swiftly had he grown in grasp of the
sweep of Christ's work! How far beneath that moment of illumination
some of his subsequent actions fell!

We have only a summary of his exhortations, the gist of which was
earnest warning to separate from the fate of the nation by separating
in will and mind from its sins. Swift conviction followed the
Spirit-given words, as it ever will do when the speaker is filled with
the Holy Spirit, and has therefore a tongue of fire. Three thousand new
disciples were made that day, and though there must have been many
superficial adherents, and none with much knowledge, it is perhaps not
fanciful to see in Luke's speaking of them as 'souls' a hint that, in
general, the acceptance of Jesus as Messiah was deep and real. Not only
were three thousand 'names' added to the hundred and twenty, but three
thousand souls.

III. The fair picture of the morning brightness, so soon overclouded,
so long lost, follows. First, the narrative tells how the raw converts
were incorporated in the community, and assimilated to its character.
They, too, 'continued steadfastly' (Acts i. 14). Note the four points
enumerated: 'teaching,' which would be principally instruction in the
life of Jesus and His Messianic dignity, as proved by prophecy;
'fellowship,' which implies community of disposition and oneness of
heart manifested in outward association; 'breaking of bread,'--that is,
the observance of the Lord's Supper; and 'the prayers,' which were the
very life-breath of the infant Church (i. 14). Thus oneness in faith
and in love, participation in the memorial feast and in devotional acts
bound the new converts to the original believers, and trained them
towards maturity. These are still the methods by which a sudden influx
of converts is best dealt with, and babes in Christ nurtured to full
growth. Alas! that so often churches do not know what to do with
novices when they come in numbers.

A wider view of the state of the community as a whole closes the
chapter. It is the first of several landing-places, as it were, on
which Luke pauses to sum up an epoch. A reverent awe laid hold of the
popular mind, which was increased by the miraculous powers of the
Apostles. The Church will produce that impression on the world in
proportion as it is manifestly filled with the Spirit. Do we? The
so-called community of goods was not imposed by commandment, as is
plain from Peter's recognition of Ananias' right to do as he chose with
his property. The facts that Mark's mother, Mary, had a house of her
own, and that Barnabas, her relative, is specially signalised as having
sold his property, prove that it was not universal. It was an
irrepressible outcrop of the brotherly feeling that filled all hearts.
Christ has not come to lay down laws, but to give impulses. Compelled
communism is not the repetition of that oneness of sympathy which
effloresced in the bright flower of this common possession of
individual goods. But neither is the closed purse, closed because the
heart is shut, which puts to shame so much profession of brotherhood,
justified because the liberality of the primitive disciples was not by
constraint nor of obligation, but willing and spontaneous.

Verses 46 and 47 add an outline of the beautiful daily life of the
community, which was, like their liberality, the outcome of the feeling
of brotherhood, intensified by the sense of the gulf between them and
the crooked generation from which they had separated themselves. Luke
shows it on two sides. Though they had separated from the nation, they
clung to the Temple services, as they continued to do till the end.
They had not come to clear consciousness of all that was involved in
their discipleship, It was not God's will that the new spirit should
violently break with the old letter. Convulsions are not His way,
except as second-best. The disciples had to stay within the fold of
Israel, if they were to influence Israel. The time of outward parting
between the Temple and the Church was far ahead yet.

But the truest life of the infant Church was not nourished in the
Temple, but in the privacy of their homes. They were one family, and
lived as such. Their 'breaking bread at home' includes both their
ordinary meals and the Lord's Supper; for in these first days every
meal, at least the evening meal of every day, was hallowed by having
the Supper as a part of it. Each meal was thus a religious act, a token
of brotherhood, and accompanied with praise. Surely _then_ 'men did eat
angels' food,' and on platter and cup was written 'Holiness to the
Lord.' The ideal of human fellowship was realised, though but for a
moment, and on a small scale. It was inevitable that divergences should
arise, but it was not inevitable that the Church should depart so far
from the brief brightness of its dawn. Still the sweet concordant
brotherhood of these morning hours witnesses what Christian love can
do, and prophesies what shall yet be and shall not pass.

No wonder that such a Church won favour with all the people! We hear
nothing of its evangelising activity, but its life was such that,
without recorded speech, multitudes were drawn into so sweet a
fellowship. If we were like the Pentecostal Christians, we should
attract wearied souls out of the world's Babel into the calm home where
love and brotherhood reigned, and God would 'add' to _us_ 'day by day
those that were being saved.'



THE NAME ABOVE EVERY NAME

'Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath
made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and
Christ.'--ACTS ii. 36.

It is no part of my purpose at this time to consider the special
circumstances under which these words were spoken, nor even to enter
upon an exposition of their whole scope. I select them for one reason,
the occurrence in them of the three names by which we designate our
Saviour--Jesus, Lord, Christ. To us they are very little more than
three proper names; they were very different to these men who listened
to the characteristically vehement discourse of the Apostle Peter. It
wanted some courage to stand up at Pentecost and proclaim on the
housetop what he had spoken in the ear long ago, 'Thou art the Christ,
the Son of the living God!' To most of his listeners to say 'Jesus is
the Christ' was folly, and to say 'Jesus is the Lord' was blasphemy.

The three names are names of the same Person, but they proclaim
altogether different aspects of His work and His character. The name
'Jesus' is the name of the Man, and brings to us a Brother; the name
'Christ' is the name of office, and brings to us a Redeemer; the name
'Lord' is the name of dignity, and brings to us a King.

I. First, then, the name Jesus is the name of the Man, and tells us of
a Brother.

There were many men in Palestine who bore the name of 'Jesus' when He
bore it. We find that one of the early Christians had it; and it comes
upon us with almost a shock when we read that 'Jesus, called Justus,'
was the name of one of the friends of the Apostle Paul (Col. iv. 11).
But, through reverence on the part of Christians, and through horror on
the part of Jews, the name ceased to be a common one; and its
disappearance from familiar use has hid from us the fact of its common
employment at the time when our Lord bore it. Though it was given to
Him as indicative of His office of saving His people from their sins,
yet none of all the crowds who knew Him as Jesus of Nazareth supposed
that in His name there was any greater significance than in those of
the 'Simons,' 'Johns,' and 'Judahs' in the circle of His disciples.

Now the use of Jesus as the proper name of our Lord is very noticeable.
In the Gospels, as a rule, it stands alone hundreds of times, whilst in
combination with any other of the titles it is rare. 'Jesus Christ,'
for instance, only occurs, if I count aright, twice in Matthew, once in
Mark, twice in John. But if you turn to the Epistles and the latter
books of the Scriptures, the proportions are reversed. There you have a
number of instances of the occurrence of such combinations as 'Jesus
Christ,' 'Christ Jesus,' 'The Lord Jesus,' 'Christ the Lord,' and more
rarely the full solemn title, 'The Lord Jesus Christ,' but the
occurrence of the proper name 'Jesus' alone is the exception. So far as
I know, there are only some thirty or forty instances of its use singly
in the whole of the books of the New Testament outside of the four
Evangelists. The occasions where it is used are all of them occasions
in which one may see that the writer's intention is to put strong
emphasis, for some reason or other, on the Manhood of our Lord Jesus,
and to assert, as broadly as may be, His entire participation with us
in the common conditions of our human nature, corporeal and mental.

And I think I shall best bring out the meaning and worth of the name by
putting a few of these instances before you.

For example, more than once we find phrases like these: 'we believe
that _Jesus_ died,' 'having therefore boldness to enter into the
holiest by the blood of _Jesus_,' and the like--which emphasise His
death as the death of a man like ourselves, and bring us close to the
historical reality of His human pains and agonies for us. '_Christ_
died' is a statement which makes the purpose and efficacy of His death
more plain, but '_Jesus_ died' shows us His death as not only the work
of the appointed Messiah, but as the act of our brother man, the
outcome of His human love, and never rightly to be understood if His
work be thought of apart from His personality.

There is brought into view, too, prominently, the side of Christ's
sufferings which we are all apt to forget--the common human side of His
agonies and His pains. I know that a certain school of preachers, and
some unctuous religious hymns, and other forms of composition, dwell, a
great deal too much for reverence, upon the mere physical aspect of
Christ's sufferings. But the temptation, I believe, with most of us is
to dwell too little upon that,--to argue about the death of Christ, to
think about it as a matter of speculation, to regard it as a mysterious
power, to look upon it as an official act of the Messiah who was sent
into the world for us; and to forget that He bore a manhood like our
own, a body that was impatient of pains and wounds and sufferings, and
a human life which, like all human lives, naturally recoiled and shrank
from the agony of death.

And whilst, therefore, the great message, 'It is Christ that died,' is
ever to be pondered, we have also to think with sympathy and gratitude
on the homelier representation coming nearer to our hearts, which
proclaims that 'Jesus died.' Let us not forget the Brother's manhood
that had to agonise and to suffer and to die as the price of our
salvation.

Again, when the Scripture would set our Lord before us, as in His
humanity, our pattern and example, it sometimes uses this name, in
order to give emphasis to the thought of His Manhood--as, for example,
in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 'looking unto Jesus, the
Author and Perfecter of faith.' That is to say--a mighty stimulus to
all brave perseverance in our efforts after higher Christian nobleness
lies in the vivid and constant realisation of the true manhood of our
Lord, as the type of all goodness, as having Himself lived by faith,
and that in a perfect degree and manner. We are to turn away our eyes
from contemplating all other lives and motives, and to 'look off' from
them to Him. In all our struggles let us think of Him. Do not take poor
human creatures for your ideal of excellence, nor tune your harps to
their keynotes. To imitate men is degradation, and is sure to lead to
deformity. None of them, is a safe guide. Black veins are in the purest
marble, and flaws in the most lustrous diamonds. But to imitate Jesus
is freedom, and to be like Him is perfection. Our code of morals is His
life. He is the Ideal incarnate. The secret of all progress is,
'Run--looking unto Jesus.'

Then, again, we have His manhood emphasised when His sympathy is to be
commended to our hearts. 'The great High Priest, who is passed into the
heavens' is '_Jesus_' ... 'who was in all points tempted like as we
are.' To every sorrowing soul, to all men burdened with heavy tasks,
unwelcome duties, pains and sorrows of the imagination, or of the
heart, or of memory, or of physical life, or of circumstances--to all
there comes the thought, 'Every ill that flesh is heir to' He knows by
experience, and in the Man Jesus we find not only the pity of a God,
but the sympathy of a Brother.

When one of our princes goes for an afternoon into the slums in East
London, everybody says, and says deservedly, 'right!' and 'princely!'
_This_ prince has learned pity in 'the huts where poor men lie,' and
knows by experience all their squalor and misery. The Man Jesus is the
sympathetic Priest. The Rabbis, who did not usually see very far into
the depth of things, yet caught a wonderful glimpse when they said:
'Messias will be found sitting outside the gate of the city _amongst
the lepers_.' That _is_ where He sits; and the perfectness of His
sympathy, and the completeness of His identification of Himself with
all our tears and our sorrows, are taught us when we read that our High
Priest is not merely Christ the Official, but Jesus the Man.

And then we find such words as these: 'If we believe that _Jesus_ died
and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring
with Him': I think any one that reads with sympathy must feel how very
much closer to our hearts that consolation comes, 'Jesus rose again,'
than even the mighty word which the Apostle uses on another occasion,
'Christ is risen from the dead.' The one tells us of the risen
Redeemer, the other tells us of the risen Brother. And wherever there
are sorrowing souls, enduring loss and following their dear ones into
the darkness with yearning hearts, they are comforted when they feel
that the beloved dead lie down beside their Brother, and with their
Brother they shall rise again.

So, again, most strikingly, and yet somewhat singularly, in the words
of Scripture which paint most loftily the exaltation of the risen
Saviour to the right hand of God, and His wielding of absolute power
and authority, it is the old human name that is used; as if the writers
would bind together the humiliation and the exaltation, and were
holding up hands of wonder at the thought that a Man had risen thus to
the Throne of the Universe. What an emphasis and glow of hope there is
in such words as these: 'We see not yet all things put under Him, but
we see _Jesus_'--the very Man that was here with us--'crowned with
glory and honour.' So in the Book of the Revelation the chosen name for
Him who sits amidst the glories of the heavens, and settles the
destinies of the universe, and orders the course of history, is Jesus.
As if the Apostle would assure us that the face which looked down upon
him from amidst the blaze of the glory was indeed the face that he knew
long ago upon earth, and the breast that 'was girded with a golden
girdle' was the breast upon which he so often had leaned his happy head.

So the ties that bind us to the Man Jesus should be the human bonds
that knit us to one another, transferred to Him and purified and
strengthened. All that we have failed to find in men we can find in
Him. Human wisdom has its limits, but here is a Man whose word is
truth, who is Himself the truth. Human love is sometimes hollow, often
impotent; it looks down upon us, as a great thinker has said, like the
Venus of Milo, that lovely statue, smiling in pity, but it has no arms.
But here is a love that is mighty to help, and on which we can rely
without disappointment or loss. Human excellence is always limited and
imperfect, but here is One whom we may imitate and be pure. So let us
do like that poor woman in the Gospel story--bring our precious
alabaster box of ointment--the love of these hearts of ours, which is
the most precious thing we have to give. The box of ointment that we
have so often squandered upon unworthy heads--let us come and pour it
upon His, not unmingled with our tears, and anoint Him, our beloved and
our King. This Man has loved each of us with a brother's heart; let us
love Him with all our hearts.

II. So much for the first name. The second--'Christ'--is the name of
office, and brings to us a Redeemer.

I need not dwell at any length upon the original significance and force
of the name; it is familiar, of course, to us all. It stands as a
transference into Greek of the Hebrew Messias; the one and the other
meaning, as we all know, the 'Anointed.' But what is the meaning of
claiming for Jesus that He is anointed? A sentence will answer the
question. It means that He fulfils all which the inspired imagination
of the great ones of the past had seen in that dim Figure that rose
before prophet and psalmist. It means that He is anointed or inspired
by the divine indwelling to be Prophet, Priest, and King all over the
world. It means that He is--though the belief had faded away from the
minds of His generation--a sufferer whilst a Prince, and appointed to
'turn away unrighteousness' from the world, and not from 'Jacob' only,
by a sacrifice and a death.

I cannot see less in the contents of the Jewish idea, the prophetic
idea, of the Messias, than these points: divine inspiration or
anointing; a sufferer who is to redeem; the fulfiller of all the
rapturous visions of psalmist and of prophet in the past.

And so, when Peter stood up amongst that congregation of wondering
strangers and scowling Pharisees, and said, 'The Man that died on the
Cross, the Rabbi-peasant from half-heathen Galilee, is the Person to
whom Law and Prophets have been pointing,'--no wonder that no one
believed him except those whose hearts were touched, for it is never
possible for the common mind, at any epoch, to believe that a man who
stands beside them is very much bigger than themselves. Great men have
always to die, and get a halo of distance around them, before their
true stature can be seen.

And now two remarks are all I can afford myself upon this point, and
one is this: the hearty recognition of His Messiahship is the centre of
all discipleship. The earliest and the simplest Christian creed, which
yet--like the little brown roll in which the infant beech-leaves lie
folded up--contains in itself all the rest, was this: 'Jesus is
Christ.' Although it is no part of my business to say how much
imperfection and confusion of head comprehension may co-exist with a
heart acceptance of Jesus that saves a soul from sin, yet I cannot in
faithfulness to my own convictions conceal my belief that he who
contents himself with 'Jesus' and does not grasp 'Christ' has cast away
the most valuable and characteristic part of the Christianity which he
professes. Surely a most simple inference is that a _Christian_ is at
least a man who recognises the Christship of Jesus. And I press that
upon you, my friends. It is not enough for the sustenance of your own
souls and for the cultivation of a vigorous religious life that men
should admire, howsoever profoundly and deeply, the humanity of the
Lord unless that humanity leads them on to see the office of the
Messiah to whom their whole hearts cleave. 'Jesus is the Christ' is the
minimum Christian creed.

And then, still further, let me remind you how the recognition of Jesus
as Christ is essential to giving its full value to the facts of the
manhood. 'Jesus died!' Yes. What then? What is that to me? Is that all
that I have to say? If His is simply a human death, like all others, I
want to know what makes the story of it a Gospel. I want to know what
more interest I have in it than I have in the death of Socrates, or in
the death of any man or woman whose name was in the obituary column of
yesterday's newspaper. 'Jesus died.' That is a fact. What is wanted to
turn the fact into a gospel? That I shall know who it was that died,
and why He died. 'I declare unto you the gospel which I preach,' Paul
says, 'how that _Christ_ died for our sins, according to the
Scriptures.' The belief that the death of Jesus was the death of the
Christ is needful in order that it shall be the means of my deliverance
from the burden of sin. If it be only the death of Jesus, it is
beautiful, pathetic, as many another martyr's has been, but if it be
the death of Christ, then 'my faith can lay her hand' on that great
Sacrifice 'and know her guilt was there.'

So in regard to His perfect example. If we only see His manhood when we
are 'looking unto Jesus,' the contemplation of His perfection would be
as paralysing as spectacles of supreme excellence usually are. But when
we can say, '_Christ_ also suffered for us, leaving us an example,' and
so can deepen the thought of His Manhood into that of His Messiahship,
and the conception of His work as example into that of His work as
sacrifice, we can hope that His divine power will dwell in us to mould
our lives to the likeness of His human life of perfect obedience.

So in regard to His Resurrection and glorious Ascension to the right
hand of God. We have not only to think of the solitary man raised from
the grave and caught up to the throne. If it were only 'Jesus' who rose
and ascended, His Resurrection and Ascension might be as much to us as
the raising of Lazarus, or the rapture of Elijah--namely, a
demonstration that death did not destroy conscious being, and that a
man could rise to heaven; but they would be no more. But if '_Christ_
is risen from the dead,' He is 'become the first-fruits of them that
slept.' If _Jesus_ has gone up on high, others may or may not follow in
His train. He may show that manhood is not incapable of elevation to
heaven, but has no power to draw others up after Him. But if _Christ_
is gone up, He is gone to prepare a place for us, not to fill a
solitary throne, and His Ascension is the assurance that He will lift
us too to dwell with Him and share His triumph over death and sin.

Most of the blessedness and beauty of His Example, all the mystery and
meaning of His Death, and all the power of His Resurrection, depend on
the fact that 'it is _Christ_ that died, yea rather, that is risen
again, who is even at the right hand of God.'

III. 'The Lord' is the name of dignity and brings before us the King.

There are three grades, so to speak, of dignity expressed by this one
word 'Lord' in the New Testament. The lowest is that in which it is
almost the equivalent of our own English title of respectful courtesy,
'Sir,' in which sense it is often used in the Gospels, and applied to
our Lord as to many other of the persons there. The second is that in
which it expresses dignity and authority--and in that sense it is
frequently applied to Christ. The third and highest is that in which it
is the equivalent of the Old Testament 'Lord,' as a divine name; in
which sense also it is applied to Christ in the New Testament.

The first and last of these may be left out of consideration now: the
central one is the meaning of the word here. I have only time to touch
upon two thoughts--to connect this name of dignity first with one and
then with the other of the two names that we have already considered.

Jesus is Lord, that is to say, wonderful as it is, His manhood is
exalted to supreme dignity. It is the teaching of the New Testament,
that in Jesus, the Child of Mary, our nature sits on the throne of the
universe and rules over all things. Those rude herdsmen, brothers of
Joseph, who came into Pharaoh's palace--strange contrast to their
tents!--there found their brother ruling over that ancient and highly
civilised land! We have the Man Jesus for the Lord over all. Trust His
dominion and rejoice in His rule, and bow before His authority. Jesus
is Lord.

Christ is Lord. That is to say: His sovereign authority and dominion
are built upon the fact of His being Deliverer, Redeemer, Sacrifice.
His Kingdom is a Kingdom that rests upon His suffering. 'Wherefore God
also hath exalted Him, and given Him a Name that is above every name.'

It is because He wears a vesture dipped in blood, that 'on the vesture
is the name written "King of kings, and Lord of lords."' It is 'because
He shall deliver the needy when he crieth,' as the prophetic psalm has
it, that 'all kings shall fall down before Him and all nations shall
serve Him.' Because He has given His life for the world He is the
Master of the World. His humanity is raised to the throne because His
humanity stooped to the cross. As long as men's hearts can be touched
by absolute unselfish surrender, and as long as they can know the
blessedness of responsive surrender, so long will He who gave Himself
for the world be the Sovereign of the world, and the First-born from
the dead be the Prince of all the kings of the earth.

And so, dear friends, our thoughts to-day all point to this lesson--do
not you content yourselves with a maimed Christ. Do not tarry in the
Manhood; do not think it enough to cherish reverence for the nobility
of His soul, the gentle wisdom of His words, the beauty of His
character, the tenderness of His compassion. All these will be
insufficient for your needs. There is more in His mission than
these--even His death for you and for all men. Take Him for your Christ,
but do not lose the Person in the Work, any more than you lose the work in
the Person. And be not content with an intellectual recognition of Him,
but bring Him the faith which cleaves to Him and His work as its only
hope and peace, and the love which, because of His work as Christ,
flows out to the beloved Person who has done it all. Thus loving Jesus
and trusting Christ, you will bring obedience to your Lord and homage
to your King, and learn the sweetness and power of 'the name that is
above every name'--the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

May we all be able, with clear and unfaltering conviction of our
understandings and loving affiance of our whole souls, to repeat as our
own the grand words in which so many centuries have proclaimed their
faith--words which shed a spell of peacefulness over stormy lives, and
fling a great light of hope into the black jaws of the grave: 'I
believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord!'



A FOURFOLD CORD

'And they continued stedfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and
fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.'--ACTS ii. 42.

The Early Church was not a pattern for us, and the idea of its greatly
superior purity is very largely a delusion. But still, though that be
true, the occasional glimpses that we get at intervals in the early
chapters of this Book of the Acts of the Apostles do present a very
instructive and beautiful picture of what a Christian society may be,
and therefore of what Christian Churches and Christian individuals
ought to be.

The words that I have read, however, are not the description of the
demeanour of the whole community, but of that portion of it which had
been added so swiftly to the original nucleus on the Day of Pentecost.
Think, on the morning of that day 'the number of the names was one
hundred and twenty,' on the evening of that day it was three thousand
over that number--a sufficiently swift and large increase to have
swamped the original nucleus, unless there had been a great power of
assimilation to itself lodged in that little body. These new converts
held to the Apostolic 'doctrine' and 'fellowship,' and to 'breaking of
bread' and to 'prayers,' and so became homogeneous with the others, and
all worked to one end.

Now, these four points which are signalised in this description may
well afford us material for consideration. They give us the ideal of a
Church's inner life, which in the divine order should precede, and be
the basis of, a Church's work in the world. But, while we speak of an
ideal for a Church, let us not forget that it is realised only by the
lives of individuals being conformed to it.

I. The first point, which is fundamental to all the others, is 'They
continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine.'

An earnest desire after fuller knowledge is the basis of all healthy
Christian life. We cannot realise, without a great effort, the
ignorance of these new converts. 'Parthians and Medes and Elamites,'
and Jews gathered from every corner of the Roman world, they had come
up to Jerusalem, and the bulk of them knew no more about Christ and
Christianity than what they picked up out of Peter's sermon on the Day
of Pentecost. But that was enough to change their hearts and their
wills and to lead them to a real faith. And though the _contents_ of
their faith were very incomplete, the _power_ of their faith was very
great. For there is no necessary connection between the amount believed
and the grasp with which it is held. Believing, they were eager for
more light to be poured on to their half-seeing eyes. They had no
Gospels, they had no written record, they had no means of learning
anything about the faith which they were now professing except
listening to one or other of the original Eleven, with the addition of
any of the other 'old disciples'--that is, _early_ disciples--who might
perchance have equal claims to be listened to as 'witnesses from the
beginning.' We shall very much misunderstand the meaning of the words
here, if we suppose that these novices were dosed with theological
instruction, or that 'the Apostles' doctrine' consisted of such fully
developed truths as we find later on in Paul's writings. If you will
look at the first sermons that Peter is recorded as having delivered,
in the early chapters of the Acts, you will find that he by no means
enunciates a definite theology such as he unfolds in his later Epistle.
There is no word about the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; His
designation is 'Thy holy child Jesus.' There is no word about the
atoning nature of Christ's sacrifice; His death is simply the great
crime of the Jewish people, and His Resurrection the great divine fact
witnessing to the truth of His Messiahship. All that which we now
regard, and rightly regard, as the very centre and living focus of
divine truth was but beginning to shine out on the Apostles' minds, or
rather to gather itself into form, and to shape itself by slow degrees
into propositions. 'The Apostles' teaching'--for 'doctrine' does not
convey to modern ears what Luke meant by the word--must have been very
largely, if not exclusively, of the same kind as is preserved to us in
the four Gospels, and especially in the first three of them. The
recital to these listeners, to whom it was all so fresh and strange and
transcendent, of the story that has become worn and commonplace to us
by its familiarity, of Christ in His birth, Christ in His gentleness,
Christ in His deeds, Christ in the deep words that the Apostles were
only beginning to understand; Christ in His Death, Resurrection, and
Ascension--these were the themes on the narration of which this company
of three thousand waited with such eagerness.

But, of course, there was necessarily involved in the story a certain
amount of what we now call doctrine--that is, theological
teaching--because one cannot tell the story of Jesus Christ, as it is
told in the four Gospels, without impressing upon the hearers the
conviction that His nature was divine and that His death was a
sacrifice. Beyond these truths we know not how far the Apostles went.
To these, perhaps, they did not at first rise. But whether they did so
or no, and although the facts that the hearers were thus eager to
receive, and treasured when they received, are the commonplaces of our
Sunday-schools, and quite uninteresting to many of us, the spirit which
marked these early converts is the spirit that must lie at the
foundation of progressive and healthy Christianity in us. The
consciousness of our own ignorance, of the great sweep of God's
revealed mind and will, the eager desire to fill up the gaps in the
circle, and to widen the diameter, of our knowledge, and the consequent
steadfastness and persistence of our continuance in the teachings--far
fuller and deeper and richer and nobler than were heard in the upper
room at Jerusalem by the first three thousand--which, through the
divine Spirit and the experience of the Church for nineteen hundred
years are available for us, ought to characterise us all.

Now, dear friends, ask yourselves the question very earnestly, Does
this desire of fuller Christian knowledge at all mark my Christian
character, and does it practically influence my Christian conduct and
life? There are thousands of men and women in all our churches who know
no more about the rich revelation of God in Jesus Christ than they did
on that day long, long ago, when first they began to apprehend that He
was the Saviour of their souls. When I sometimes get glimpses into the
utter Biblical ignorance of educated members of my own and of other
congregations, I am appalled; I do not wonder how we ministers do so
little by our preaching, when the minds of the people to whom we speak
are so largely in such a chaotic state in reference to Scriptural
truth. I believe that there is an intolerance of plain, sober,
instructive Christian teaching from the pulpit, which is one of the
worst signs of the Christianity of this generation. And I believe that
there are a terribly large number of professing Christians, and good
people after a fashion, whose Bibles are as clean to-day, except on one
or two favourite pages, as they were when they came out of the
bookseller's shop years and years ago. You will never be strong
Christians, you will never be happy ones, until you make conscience of
the study of God's Word and 'continue steadfastly in the Apostles'
teaching.' You may produce plenty of emotional Christianity, and of
busy and sometimes fussy work without it, but you will not get depth. I
sometimes think that the complaint of the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews might be turned upside down nowadays. He says: 'When for the
time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again
which be the first principles.' Nowadays we might say in Sunday-schools
and other places of church work: 'When for the time ye ought to be
_learners_, you have taken to teaching before you know what you are
teaching, and so neither you nor your scholars will profit much.' The
vase should be full before you begin to empty it.

Again, there ought to be, and we ought to aim after, an equable temper
of mutual brotherhood conquering selfishness.

'They continued in the Apostles' doctrine and in fellowship.'
'Fellowship' here, as I take it, applies to community of feeling. A
verse or two afterwards it is applied to community of goods, but we
have nothing to do with that subject at present. What is meant is that
these three thousand, as was most natural, cut off altogether from
their ancient associations, finding themselves at once separated by a
great gulf from their nation and its hopes and its religion, were
driven together as sheep are when wolves are prowling around. And,
being individually weak, they held on by one another, so that many
weaknesses might make a strength, and glimmering embers raked together
might break into a flame.

Now, all these circumstances, or almost all of them, that drove the
primitive believers together, are at an end, and the tendencies of this
day are rather to drive Christian people apart than to draw them
together. Differences of position, occupation, culture, ways of looking
at things, views of Christian truth and the like, all come powerfully
in to the reinforcement of the natural selfishness which tempts us all,
unless the grace of God overcomes it. Although we do not want any
hysterical or histrionic presentation of Christian sympathy and
brotherhood, we do need--far more than any of us have awakened to the
consciousness of the need--for the health of our own souls we need to
make definite efforts to cultivate more of that sense of Christian
brotherhood with all that hold the same Lord Christ, and to realise
this truth: that they and we, however separate, are nearer one another
than are we and those nearest to us who do not share in our Christian
faith.

I do not dwell upon this point. It is one on which it is easy to gush,
and it has got a bad name because there has been so much unreal and
sickly talk about it. But if any Christian man will honestly try to
cultivate the brotherly feeling which my text suggests, and to which
our common relation to Jesus Christ binds us, and will try it in
reference to _A_, _B_, or _C_, whom he does not much like, with whose
ways he has no kind of sympathy, whom he believes to be a heretic, and
who perhaps returns the belief about him with interest, he will find it
is a pretty sharp test of his Christian principle. Let us be real, at
any rate, and not pretend to have more love than we really have in our
hearts. And let us remember that 'he that loveth Him that begat, loveth
Him also that is begotten of Him.'

II. Another characteristic which comes out in the words before us is
the blending of worship with life.

'They continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine ... and in
breaking of bread.' Commentators who can only see one thing at a
time--and there are a good many of that species--have got up great
discussions as to whether this phrase means eating ordinary meals or
partaking of the Lord's Supper. I venture to say it means both,
because, clearly enough, in the beginning, the common meal was hallowed
by what we now call the Lord's Supper being associated with it, and
every day's evening repast was eaten 'in remembrance of Him.'

So, naturally, and without an idea of anything awful or sacred about
the rite, the first Christians, when they went home after a hard day's
work and sat down to take their own suppers, blessed the bread and the
wine, and whether they ate or drank, did the one and the other 'in
remembrance of Him.'

The gradual growth of the sentiment attaching to the Lord's Supper,
until it reached the portentous height of regarding it as a 'tremendous
sacrifice' which could only be administered by priests with ordained
hands in Apostolic succession, can be partly traced even in New
Testament times. The Lord's Supper began as an appendage to, or rather
as a heightening of, the evening meal, and at first, as this chapter
tells us in a subsequent verse, was observed day by day. Then, before
the epoch of the Acts of the Apostles is ended, we find it has become a
weekly celebration, and forms part of the service on the first day of
the week. But even when the observance had ceased to be daily, the
association with an ordinary meal continued, and that led to the
disorders at Corinth which Paul rebuked, and which would have been
impossible if later ideas of the Lord's Supper had existed then.

The history of the transformation of that simple Supper into 'the
bloodless sacrifice' of the Mass, and all the mischief consequent
thereon, does not concern us now. But it does concern us to note that
these first believers hallowed common things by doing them, and common
food by partaking of it, with the memory of His great sacrifice in
their minds. The poorest fare, the coarsest bread, the sourest wine, on
the humblest table, became a memorial of that dear Lord. Religion and
life, the domestic and the devout, were so closely braided together
that when a household sat at table it was both a family and a church;
and while they were eating their meat for the strength of their body,
they were partaking of the memorial of their dying Lord.

Is your house like that? Is your daily life like that? Do you bring the
sacred and the secular as close together as that? Are the dying words
of your Master, 'This do in remembrance of Me,' written by you over
everything you do? And so is all life worship, and all worship hope?

III. The last thing here is habitual devotion.

I suppose the disciples had no forms of set Christian prayers. They
still used the Jewish liturgy, for we read that 'they continued daily
with one accord in the Temple.' I am sure that no two things can be
less like one another than the worship of the primitive Church and the
worship, say, of one of our congregations. Did you ever try to paint
for yourselves, for instance, the scene described in the First Epistle
to the Corinthians? When they came together in their meetings for
worship, 'every one had a psalm, a doctrine, an interpretation.' 'Let
the prophets speak, by ones, or at most by twos'; and if another gets
up to interrupt, let the first speaker sit down. Paul goes on to say,
'Let all things be done decently and in order.' So there must have been
tendencies to disorder, and much at which some of our modern
ecclesiastical martinets would have been very much scandalised as
'unbecoming.' Wise men are in no haste to change forms. Forms change of
themselves when their users change; but it would be a good day for
Christendom if the faith and devoutness of a community of believers
such as we, for instance, profess to be, were so strong and so
demanding expression as that, instead of my poor voice continually
sounding here, every one of you had a psalm or a doctrine, and every
one of you were able and impelled to speak out of the fulness of the
Spirit which God poured into you. It will come some day; it must come
if Christendom is not to die of its own dignity. But we do not need to
hurry matters, only let us remember that unless a Church continues
steadfast in prayer it is worth very little.

Now, dear brethren, it is said about us Free Churchmen that we think a
great deal too much of preaching and a great deal too little of the
prayers of the congregation. That is a stock criticism. I am bound to
say that there is a grain of truth in it, and that there is not, with
too many of our congregations, as lofty a conception of the power and
blessedness of the united prayers of the congregation as there ought to
be, or else you would not hear about 'introductory services.'
Introductory to what? Do we speak to God merely by way of preface to
one of us talking to his brethren? Is that the proper order? 'They
continued steadfastly in the Apostles' teaching,' no doubt; but also
'steadfastly in prayer.' I pray you to try to make this picture of the
Pentecostal converts the ideal of your own lives, and to do your best
to help forward the time when it shall be the reality in this church,
and in every other society of professing Christians.



A PURE CHURCH AN INCREASING CHURCH

'And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.'--ACTS
ii. 47.

'And the Lord added to them day by day those that were being
saved.'--(R. V.)

You observe that the principal alterations of these words in the
Revised Version are two: the one the omission of 'the church,' the
other the substitution of 'were being saved' for 'such as should be
saved.' The former of these changes has an interest as suggesting that
at the early period referred to the name of 'the church' had not yet
been definitely attached to the infant community, and that the word
afterwards crept into the text at a time when ecclesiasticism had
become a great deal stronger than it was at the date of the writing of
the Acts of the Apostles. The second of the changes is of more
importance. The Authorised Version's rendering suggests that salvation
is a future thing, which in one aspect is partially true. The Revised
Version, which is also by far the more literally accurate, suggests the
other idea, that salvation is a process going on all through the course
of a Christian man's life. And that carries very large and important
lessons.

I. I ask you to notice here, first, the profound conception which the
writer had of the present action of the ascended Christ. 'The Lord
added to them day by day those that were being saved.'

Then Christ (for it is He that is here spoken of as the Lord), the
living, ascended Christ, was present in, and working with, that little
community of believing souls. You will find that the thought of a
present Saviour, who is the life-blood of the Church on earth, and the
spring of action for all good that is done in it and by it, runs
through the whole of this Book of the Acts of the Apostles. The keynote
is struck in its first verses: 'The former treatise have I made, O
Theophilus, of all that Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day
in which He was taken up.' That is the description of Luke's Gospel,
and it implies that the Acts of the Apostles is the _second_ treatise,
which tells all that Jesus continued to do and teach _after_ that He
was taken up. So the Lord, the ascended Christ, is the true theme and
hero of this book. It is He, for instance, who sends down the Spirit on
the Day of Pentecost. It is He whom the dying martyr sees 'standing at
the right hand of God,' ready to help. It is He who appears to the
persecutor on the road to Damascus. It is He who sends Paul and his
company to preach in Europe. It is He who opens hearts for the
reception of their message. It is He who stands by the Apostle in a
vision, and bids him 'be of good cheer,' and go forth upon his work.
Thus, at every crisis in the history of the Church, it is the
Lord--that is to say, Christ Himself--who is revealed as working in
them and for them, the ascended but yet ever-present Guide, Counsellor,
Inspirer, Protector, and Rewarder of them that put their trust in Him.
So here it is He that 'adds to the Church daily them that were being
saved.'

I believe, dear brethren, that modern Christianity has far too much
lost the vivid impression of this present Christ as actually dwelling
and working among us. What is good in us and what is bad in us conspire
to make us think more of the past work of an ascended Christ than of
the present work of an indwelling Christ. We cannot think too much of
that Cross by which He has laid the foundation for the salvation and
reconciliation of all the world; but we may easily think too
exclusively of it, and so fix our thoughts upon that work which He
completed when on Calvary He said, 'It is finished!' as to forget the
continual work which will never be finished until His Church is
perfected, and the world is redeemed. If we are a Church of Christ at
all, we have Christ in very deed among us, and working through us and
on us. And unless we have, in no mystical and unreal and metaphorical
sense, but in the simplest and yet grandest prose reality, that living
Saviour here in our hearts and in our fellowship, better that these
walls were levelled with the ground, and this congregation scattered to
the four winds of heaven. The present Christ is the life of His Church.

Notice, and that but for a moment, for I shall have to deal with it
more especially at another part of this discourse,--the specific action
which is here ascribed to Him. _He_ adds to the Church, not _we_, not
our preaching, not our eloquence, our fervour, our efforts. These may
be the weapons in His hands, but the hand that wields the weapon gives
it all its power to wound and to heal, and it is Christ Himself who, by
His present energy, is here represented as being the Agent of all the
good that is done by any Christian community, and the Builder-up of His
Churches, in numbers and in power.

It is His will for, His ideal of, a Christian Church, that continuously
it should be gathering into its fellowship those that are being saved.
That is His meaning in the establishment of His Church upon earth, and
that is His will concerning it and concerning us, and the question
should press on every society of Christians: Does our reality
correspond to Christ's ideal? Are we, as a portion of His great
heritage, being continually replenished by souls that come to tell what
God has done for them? Is there an unbroken flow of such into what we
call our communion? I speak to you members of this church, and I ask
you to ponder the question,--Is it so? and the other question, If it is
not so, wherefore? 'The Lord added daily,'--why does not the Lord add
daily to us?

II. Let us go to the second part of this text, and see if we can find
an answer. Notice how emphatically there is brought out here the
attractive power of an earnest and pure Church.

My text is the end of a sentence. What is the beginning of the
sentence? Listen,--'All that believed were together, and had all things
common; and sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all
men, as every man had need. And they, continuing daily with one accord
in the Temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their
meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God, and having
favour with all the people. And the Lord added.' Yes; of course.
Suppose you were like these people. Suppose this church and
congregation bore stamped upon it, plain and deep as the broad arrow of
the king, these characteristics--manifest fraternal unity, plain
unselfish unworldliness, habitual unbroken devotion, gladness which had
in it the solemnity of Heaven, and a transparent simplicity of life and
heart, which knew nothing of by-ends and shabby, personal motives or
distracting duplicity of purpose--do you not think that the Lord would
add to you daily such as should be saved? Or, to put it into other
words, wherever there is a little knot of men obviously held together
by a living Christ, and obviously manifesting in their lives and
characters the likeness of that Christ transforming and glorifying
them, there will be drawn to them--by natural gravitation, I was going
to say, but we may more correctly say, by the gravitation which is
natural in the supernatural realm--souls that have been touched by the
grace of the Lord, and souls to whom that grace has been brought the
nearer by looking upon _them_. Wherever there is inward vigour of life
there will be outward growth; and the Church which is pure, earnest,
living will be a Church which spreads and increases.

Historically, it has always been the case that in God's Church seasons
of expansion have followed upon seasons of deepened spiritual life on
the part of His people. And the only kind of growth which is wholesome,
and to be desired in a Christian community, is growth as a consequence
of the revived religiousness of the individuals who make up the
community.

And just in like manner as such a community will draw to it men who are
like-minded, so it will repel from it all the formalist people. There
are congregations that have the stamp of worldliness so deep upon them
that any persons who want to be burdened with as little religion as may
be respectable will find themselves at home there. And I come to you
Christian people here, for whose Christian character I am in some sense
and to some degree responsible, with this appeal: Do you see to it
that, so far as your influence extends, this community of ours be such
as that half-dead Christians will never think of coming near us, and
those whose religion is tepid will be repelled from us, but that they
who love the Lord Jesus Christ with earnest devotion and lofty
consecration, and seek to live unworldly and saint-like lives, shall
recognise in us men like-minded, and from whom they may draw help. I
beseech you--if you will not misunderstand the expression--make your
communion such that it will repel as well as attract; and that people
will find nothing here to draw them to an easy religion of words and
formalism, beneath which all vermin of worldliness and selfishness may
lurk, but will recognise in us a church of men and women who are bent
upon holiness, and longing for more and more conformity to the divine
Master.

Now, if all this be true, it is possible for worldly and stagnant
communities calling themselves 'Churches' to thwart Christ's purpose,
and to make it both impossible and undesirable that He should add to
them souls for whom He has died. It is a solemn thing to feel that we
may clog Christ's chariot-wheels, that there may be so little spiritual
life in us, as a congregation, that, if I may so say, He dare not
intrust us with the responsibility of guarding and keeping the young
converts whom He loves and tends. We may not be fit to be trusted with
them, and that may be why we do not get them. It may not be good for
them that they should be dropped into the refrigerating atmosphere of
such a church, and that may be why they do not come.

Depend upon it, brethren, that, far more than my preaching, your lives
will determine the expansion of this church of ours. And if my
preaching is pulling one way and your lives the other, and I have half
an hour a week for talk and you have seven days for contradictory life,
which of the two do you think is likely to win in the tug? I beseech
you, take the words that I am now trying to speak, to yourselves. Do
not pass them to the man in the next pew and think how well they fit
him, but accept them as needed by you. And remember, that just as a bit
of sealing-wax, if you rub it on your sleeve and so warm it, develops
an attractive power, the Church which is warmed will draw many to
itself. If the earlier words of this context apply to any Christian
community, then certainly its blessed promise too will apply to it, and
to such a church the Lord will 'add day by day them that are being
saved.'

III. And now, lastly, observe the definition given here of the class of
persons gathered into the community.

I have already observed, in the earlier portion of this discourse, that
here we have salvation represented as a process, a progressive thing
which runs on all through life. In the New Testament there are various
points of view from which that great idea of salvation is represented.
It is sometimes spoken of as past, in so far as in the definite act of
conversion and the first exercise of faith in Jesus Christ the whole
subsequent evolution and development are involved, and the process of
salvation has its beginning then, when a man turns to God. It is
sometimes spoken of as present, in so far as the joy of deliverance
from evil and possession of good, which is God, is realised day by day.
It is sometimes spoken of as future, in so far as all the imperfect
possession and pre-libations of salvation which we taste here on earth
prophesy and point onwards to their own perfecting in the climax of
heaven. But all these three points of view, past, present, and future,
may be merged into this one of my text, which speaks of every saint on
earth, from the infantile to the most mature, as standing in the same
row, though at different points; walking on the same road, though
advanced different distances; all participant of the same process of
'being saved.'

Through all life the deliverance goes on, the deliverance from sin, the
deliverance from wrath. The Christian salvation, then, according to the
teaching of this emphatic phrase, is a process begun at conversion,
carried on progressively through the life, and reaching its climax in
another state. Day by day, through the spring and the early summer, the
sun shines longer in the sky, and rises higher in the heavens; and the
path of the Christian is as the shining light. Last year's greenwood is
this year's hardwood; and the Christian, in like manner, has to 'grow
in the grace and knowledge of the Lord and Saviour.' So these
progressively, and, therefore, as yet imperfectly, saved people, were
gathered into the Church.

Now I have but two things to say about that. If that be the description
of the kind of folk that come into a Christian Church, the duties of
that Church are very plainly marked. And the first great one is to see
to it that the community help the growth of its members. There are
Christian Churches--I do not say whether ours is one of them or
not--into which, if a young plant is brought, it is pretty sure to be
killed. The temperature is so low that the tender shoots are nipped as
with frost, and die. I have seen people, coming all full of fervour and
of faith, into Christian congregations, and finding that the average
round them was so much lower than their own, that they have cooled down
after a time to the fashionable temperature, and grown indifferent like
their brethren. Let us, dear friends, remember that a Christian Church
is a nursery of imperfect Christians, and, for ourselves and for one
another, try to make our communion such as shall help shy and tender
graces to unfold themselves, and woo out, by the encouragement of
example, the lowest and the least perfect to lofty holiness and
consecration like the Master's.

And if I am speaking to any in this congregation who hold aloof from
Christian fellowship for more or less sufficient reasons, let me press
upon them, in one word, that if they are conscious of a possession,
however imperfect, of that incipient salvation, their place is thereby
determined, and they are doing wrong if they do not connect themselves
with some Christian Communion, and stand forth as members of Christ's
Church.

And now one last word. I have tried to show you that salvation, in the
New Testament, is regarded as a process. The opposite thing is a
process too. There is a very awful contrast in one of Paul's Epistles.
'The preaching of the Cross is to them _who are in the act of
perishing_ foolishness; unto us who are _being saved_, it is the power
of God.' These two processes start, as it were, from the same point,
one by slow degrees and almost imperceptible motion, rising higher and
higher, the other, by slow degrees and almost unconscious descent,
sliding steadily and fatally downward ever further and further. And my
point now is that in each of us one or other of these processes is
going on. Either you are slowly rising or you are slipping down. Either
a larger measure of the life of Christ, which is salvation, is passing
into your hearts, or bit by bit you are dying like some man with
creeping paralysis that begins at the extremities, and with fell,
silent, inexorable footstep, advances further and further towards the
citadel of the heart, where it lays its icy hand at last, and the man
is dead. You are either 'being saved' or you are 'perishing.' No man
becomes a devil all at once, and no man becomes an angel all at once.
Trust yourself to Christ, and He will lift you to Himself; turn your
back upon Him, as some of you are doing, and you will settle down,
down, down in the muck and the mire of your own sensuality and
selfishness, until at last the foul ooze spreads over your head, and
you are lost in the bog for ever.



'THEN SHALL THE LAME MAN LEAP AS AN HART'

'Now Peter and John went up together into the temple at the hour of
prayer, being the ninth hour. 2. And a certain man lame from his
mother's womb was carried, whom they laid daily at the gate of the
temple which is called Beautiful, to ask alms of them that entered into
the temple; 3. Who, seeing Peter and John about to go into the temple,
asked an alms. 4. And Peter, fastening his eyes upon him, with John,
said, Look on us. 5. And he gave heed unto them, expecting to receive
something of them. 6. Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but
such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth
rise up and walk. 7. And he took him by the right hand, and lifted him
up: and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength. 8. And
he leaping up, stood, and walked, and entered with them into the
temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God. 9. And all the people
saw him walking and praising God: 10. And they knew that it was he
which sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple: and they were
filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him.
11. And as the lame man which was healed held Peter and John, all the
people ran together unto them in the porch that is called Solomon's,
greatly wondering. 12. And when Peter saw it, he answered unto the
people, Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this? or why look ye so
earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made
this man to walk? 13. The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob,
the God of our fathers, hath glorified His Son Jesus; whom ye delivered
up, and denied Him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to
let Him go. 14. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a
murderer to be granted unto you; 15. And killed the Prince of Life,
whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses. 16. And
His name through faith in His name hath made this man strong, whom ye
see and know; yea, the faith which is by Him hath given him this
perfect soundness in the presence of you all.'--ACTS iii. 1-16.

'Many wonders and signs were done by the Apostles' (Acts ii. 43), but
this one is recorded in detail, both because it was conspicuous as
wrought in the Temple, and because it led to weighty consequences. The
narrative is so vivid and full of minute particulars that it suggests
an eye-witness. Was Peter Luke's informant? The style of the story is
so like that of Mark's Gospel that we might reasonably presume so.

The scene and the persons are first set before us. It was natural that
a close alliance should be cemented between Peter and John, both
because they were the principal members of the quartet which stood
first among the Apostles, and because they were so unlike each other,
and therefore completed each other. Peter's practical force and eye for
externals, and John's more contemplative nature and eye for the unseen,
needed one another. So we find them together in the judgment hall, at
the sepulchre, and here.

They 'went up to the Temple,' or, to translate more exactly and more
picturesquely, 'were going up,' when the incident to be recorded stayed
them. They had passed through the court, and came to a gate leading
into the inner court, which was called 'Beautiful.' from its artistic
excellence, when they were arrested by the sight of a lame beggar, who
had been carried there every day for many years to appeal, by the
display of his helplessness, to the entering worshippers. Precisely
similar sights may be seen to-day at the doors of many a famous
European church and many a mosque. He mechanically wailed out his
formula, apparently scarcely looking at the two strangers, nor
expecting a response. Long habit and many rebuffs had not made him
hopeful, but it was his business to ask, and so he asked.

Some quick touch of pity shot through the two friends' hearts, which
did not need to be spoken in order that each might feel it to be shared
by the other. So they paused, and, as was in keeping with their
characters, Peter took speech in hand, while John stood by assenting.
Purposed devotion is well delayed when postponed in order to lighten
misery.

There must have been something magnetic in Peter's voice and steady
gaze as he said, 'Look on us!' It was a strange preface, if only some
small coin was to follow. It kindled some flicker of hope of he knew
not what in the beggar. He expected to receive 'something' from them,
and, no doubt, was asking himself what. Expectation and receptivity
were being stirred in him, though he could not divine what was coming.
We have no right to assume that his state of mind was operative in
fitting him to be cured, nor to call his attitude 'faith,' but still he
was lifted from his usual dreary hopelessness, and some strange
anticipation was creeping into his heart.

Then comes the grand word of power. Again Peter is spokesman, but John
takes part, though silently. With a fixed gaze, which told of
concentrated purpose, and went to the lame man's heart, Peter
triumphantly avows what most men are ashamed of, and try to hide:
'Silver and gold have I none.' He had 'left all and followed Christ';
he had not made demands on the common stock. Empty pockets may go along
with true wealth.

There is a fine flash of exultant confidence in Peter's next words,
which is rather spoiled by the Authorised Version. He did not say
'_such_ as I have,' as it it was inferior to money, which he had not,
but he said '_what_ I have' (Rev. Ver.),--a very different tone. The
expression eloquently magnifies the power which he possessed as far
more precious than wealth, and it speaks of his assurance that he did
possess it--an assurance which rested, not only on his faith in his
Lord's promise and gift, but on his experience in working former
miracles.

How deep his words go into the obligations of possession! 'What I have
I give' should be the law for all Christians in regard to all that they
have, and especially in regard to spiritual riches. God gives us these,
not only in order that we may enjoy them ourselves, but in order that
we may impart, and so in our measure enter into the joy of our Lord and
know the greater blessedness of giving than of receiving. How often it
has been true that a poor church has been a miracle-working church, and
that, when it could not say 'Silver and gold have I none' it has also
lost the power of saying, 'In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
walk'!

The actual miracle is most graphically narrated. With magnificent
boldness Peter rolls out his Master's name, there, in the court of the
Temple, careless who may hear. He takes the very name that had been
used in scorn, and waves it like a banner of victory. His confidence in
his possession of power was not confidence in himself, but in his Lord.
When we can peal forth the Name with as much assurance of its
miracle-working power as Peter did, we too shall be able to make the
lame walk. A faltering voice is unworthy to speak such words, and will
speak them in vain.

The process of cure is minutely described. Peter put out his hand to
help the lame man up, and, while he was doing so, power came into the
shrunken muscles and weak ankles, so that the cripple felt that he
could raise himself, and, though all passed in a moment, the last part
of his rising was his own doing, and what began with his being 'lifted
up' ended in his 'leaping up.' Then came an instant of standing still,
to steady himself and make sure of his new strength, and then he began
to walk.

The interrupted purpose of devotion could now be pursued, but with a
gladsome addition to the company. How natural is that 'walking and
leaping and praising God'! The new power seemed so delightful, so
wonderful, that sober walking did not serve. It was a strange way of
going into the Temple, but people who are borne along by the sudden joy
of new gifts beyond hope need not be expected to go quietly, and
sticklers for propriety who blamed the man's extravagance, and would
have had him pace along with sober gait and downcast eyes, like a
Pharisee, did not know what made him thus obstreperous, even in his
devout thankfulness. 'Leaping and praising God' do make a singular
combination, but before we blame, let us be sure that we understand.

One of the old manuscripts inserts a clause which brings out more
clearly that there was a pause, during which the three remained in the
Temple in prayer. It reads, 'And when Peter and John came out, he came
out with them, holding them, and they [the people] being astonished,
stood in the porch,' etc. So we have to think of the buzzing crowd,
waiting in the court for their emergence from the sanctuary. Solomon's
porch was, like the Beautiful gate, on the east side of the Temple
enclosure, and may probably have been a usual place of rendezvous for
the brethren, as it had been a resort of their Lord.

It was a great moment, and Peter, the unlearned Galilean, the former
cowardly renegade, rose at once to the occasion. Truly it was given him
in that hour what to speak. His sermon is distinguished by its
undaunted charging home the guilt of Christ's death on the nation, its
pitying recognition of the ignorance which had done the deed, and its
urgent entreaty. We here deal with its beginning only. 'Why marvel ye
at this?'--it would have been a marvel if they had not marvelled. The
thing was no marvel to the Apostle, because he believed that Jesus was
the Christ and reigned in Heaven. Miracles fall into their place and
become supremely 'natural' when we have accepted that great truth.

The fervent disavowal of their 'own power or holiness' as concerned in
the healing is more than a modest disclaimer. It leads on to the
declaration of who is the true Worker of all that is wrought for men by
the hands of Christians. That disavowal has to be constantly repeated
by us, not so much to turn away men's admiration or astonishment from
us, as to guard our own foolish hearts from taking credit for what it
may please Jesus to do by us as His tools.

The declaration of Christ as the supreme Worker is postponed till after
the solemn indictment of the nation. But the true way to regard the
miracle is set forth at once, as being God's glorifying of Jesus. Peter
employs a designation of our Lord which is peculiar to these early
chapters of Acts. He calls Him God's 'Servant,' which is a quotation of
the Messianic title in the latter part of Isaiah, 'the Servant of the
Lord.'

The fiery speaker swiftly passes to contrast God's glorifying with
Israel's rejection. The two points on which he seizes are noteworthy.
'Ye delivered Him up'; that is, to the Roman power. That was the
deepest depth of Israel's degradation. To hand over their Messiah to
the heathen,--what could be completer faithlessness to all Israel's
calling and dignity? But that was not all: 'ye denied Him.' Did Peter
remember some one else than the Jews who had done the same, and did a
sudden throb of conscious fellowship even in that sin make his voice
tremble for a moment? Israel's denial was aggravated because it was 'in
the presence of Pilate,' and had overborne his determination to release
his prisoner. The Gentile judge would rise in the judgment to condemn
them, for he had at least seen that Jesus was innocent, and they had
hounded him on to an illegal killing, which was murder as laid to his
account, but national apostasy as laid to theirs.

These were daring words to speak in the Temple to that crowd. But the
humble fisherman had been filled with the Spirit, who is the
Strengthener, and the fear of man was dead in him. If we had never
heard of Pentecost, we should need to invent something of the sort to
make intelligible the transformation of these timid folk, the first
disciples, into heroes. A dead Christ, lying in an unknown grave, could
never have inspired His crushed followers with such courage, insight,
and elastic confidence and gladness in the face of a frowning world.



'THE PRINCE OF LIFE'

'But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be
granted unto you; 15. And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath
raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.'--ACTS iii. 14, 15.

This early sermon of Peter's, to the people, is marked by a comparative
absence of the highest view of Christ's person and work. It is open to
us to take one of two explanations of that fact. We may either say that
the Apostle was but learning the full significance of the marvellous
events that had passed so recently, or we may say that he suited his
words to his audience, and did not declare all that he knew.

At the same time, we should not overlook the significance of the
Christology which it does contain. 'His child Jesus' is really a
translation of Isaiah's 'Servant of the Lord.' 'The Holy One and the
Just' is a distinct assertion of Jesus' perfect, sinless manhood, and
'the Prince of Life' plainly asserts Jesus to be the Lord and Source of
it.

Notice, too, the pathetic 'denied': was Peter thinking of the shameful
hour in his own experience? It is a glimpse into the depth of his
penitence, and the tenderness with others' sins which it had given him,
that he twice uses the word here, as if he had said 'You have done no
more than I did myself. It is not for me to heap reproaches on you. We
have been alike in sin--and I can preach forgiveness to you sinners,
because I have received it for myself.'

Notice, too, the manifold antitheses of the words. Barabbas is set
against Christ; the Holy One and the Just against a robber, the Prince
of Life against a murderer. 'You killed'--'the Prince of Life.' 'You
killed'--'God raised.'

There are here three paradoxes, three strange and contradictory things:
the paradoxes of man's perverted and fatal choice, of man's hate
bringing death to the Lord of life, and of God's love and power causing
life to come by death.

I. The paradox of man's fatal choice.

There occurs often in history a kind of irony in which the whole
tendency of a time or of a conflict is summed up in a single act, and
certainly the fact which is referred to here is one of these. Let us
put it as it would have seemed to an onlooker then, leaving out for the
moment any loftier meaning which may attach to it.

Peter's words here, thus boldly addressed to the people, are a strong
testimony to the impression which the character of Christ had made on
His contemporaries. 'The Holy One and the Just' implies moral
perfection. The whole narrative of the Crucifixion brings out that
impression. Pilate's wife speaks with awe of 'that just person.' 'Which
of you convinceth me of sin?' 'If I have done evil, bear witness of the
evil.' 'I find no fault in Him.' We may take it for granted that the
impression Jesus made among His contemporaries was, at the lowest, that
He was a pure and good man.

The nation had to choose one of two. Jesus was the one; who was the
other? A man half brigand, half rebel, who had raised some petty revolt
against Rome, more as a pretext for robbery and crime than from
patriotism, and whose hands reeked with blood. And this was the
nation's hero!

The juxtaposition throws a strong light on the people's motive for
rejecting Jesus. The rulers may have condemned Him for blasphemy, but
the people had a more practical reason, and in it no doubt the rulers
shared. It was not because He claimed to be the Messiah that they gave
Him up to Pilate, but because He would not meet their notions of what
the Messiah should be and do. If He had called them to arms, not a man
of them would have betrayed Him to Pilate, but all, or the more daring
of them, would have rallied to His standard. Their hate was the measure
of their deep disappointment with His course. If instead of showing
love and meekness, He had blown up the coals of religious hatred; if
instead of going about doing good, He had mustered the men of lawless
Galilee for a revolt, would these fawning hypocrites have dragged him
to Pilate on the charge of forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and of
claiming to be a King? Why, there was not one of them but would have
been glad to murder every tax-gatherer in Palestine, not one of them
but bore inextinguishable in his inmost heart the faith in 'one Christ
a King.' And if that meek and silent martyr had only lifted His finger,
He might have had legions of His accusers at His back, ready to sweep
Pilate and his soldiers out of Jerusalem. They saw Christ's goodness
and holiness. It did not attract them. They wanted a Messiah who would
bring them outward freedom by the use of outward weapons, and so they
all shouted 'Not this man but Barabbas!' The whole history of the
nation was condensed in that one cry--their untamable obstinacy, their
blindness to the light of God, their fierce grasp of the promises which
they did not understand, their hard worldliness, their cruel
patriotism, their unquenchable hatred of their oppressors, which was
only equalled by their unquenchable hatred of those who showed them the
only true way for deliverance.

And this strange paradox is not confined to these Jews. It is repeated
wherever Christ is presented to men. We are told that all men naturally
admire goodness, and so on. Men mostly know it when they see it, but I
doubt whether they all either admire or like it. People generally had
rather have something more outward and tangible. It is not
spiritualising this incident, but only referring it to the principle of
which it is an illustration, to ask you to see in it the fatal choice
of multitudes. Christ is set before us all, and His beauty is partially
seen but is dimmed by externals. Men's desires are fixed on gross
sensuous delights, or on success in business, or on intellectual
eminence, or on some of the thousand other visible and temporal objects
that outshine, to vulgar eyes, the less dazzling lustre of the things
unseen. They appreciate these, and make heroes of the men who have won
them. These are their ideals, but of Jesus they have little care.

And is it not true that all such competitors of His, when they lead men
to prefer them to Him, are 'murderers,' in a sadder sense than Barabbas
was? Do they not slay the souls of their admirers? Is it not but too
ghastly a reality that all who thus choose them draw down ruin on
themselves and 'love death'?

This fatal paradox is being repeated every day in the lives of
thousands. The crowds who yelled, 'Not this man but Barabbas!' were
less guilty and less mad than those who to-day cry, 'Not Jesus but
worldly wealth, or fleeting bodily delights, or gratified ambition!'

II. The paradox of Death's seeming conquest over the Lord of Life.

The word rendered 'Prince' means an originator, and hence a leader and
hence a lord. Whether Peter had yet reached a conception of the
divinity of Jesus or not, he had clearly reached a much higher one of
Him than he had attained before His death. In some sense he was
beginning to recognise that His relation to 'life' was loftier and more
mysterious than that of other men. Was it His death only that thus
elevated the disciples' thoughts of Jesus? Strange that if He died and
there an end, such a result should have followed. One would have
expected His death to have shattered their faith in Him, but somehow it
strengthened their faith. Why did they not all continue to lament, as
did the two of them on the road to Emmaus: 'We trusted that this had
been He who should have redeemed Israel'--but now we trust no more, and
our dreams are buried in His grave? Why did they not go back to Galilee
and their nets? What raised their spirits, their courage, and increased
their understanding of Him, and their faith in Him? How came His death
to be the occasion of consolidating, not of shattering, their
fellowship? How came Peter to be so sure that a man who had died was
the 'Prince of Life'? The answer, the only one psychologically
possible, is in what Peter here proclaims to unwilling ears, 'Whom God
raised from the dead.'

The fact of the Resurrection sets the fact of the Death in another
light. Meditating on these twin facts, the Death and Resurrection of
Jesus, we hear Himself speaking as He did to John in Patmos: 'I am the
Living One who became dead, and lo, I am alive for evermore!'

If we try to listen with the ears of these first hearers of Peter's
words, we shall better appreciate his daring paradox. Think of the
tremendous audacity of the claim which they make, that Jesus should be
the 'Prince of Life,' and of the strange contradiction to it which the
fact that they 'killed' Him seems to give. How could death have power
over the Prince of Life? That sounds as if, indeed, the 'sun were
turned into darkness,' or as if fire became ice. That brief clause 'ye
killed the Prince of Life' must have seemed sheer absurdity to the
hearers whose hands were still red with the blood of Jesus.

But there is another paradox here. It was strange that death should be
able to invade that Life, but it is no less strange that men should be
able to inflict it. But we must not forget that Jesus died, not because
men slew Him, but because He willed to die. The whole of the narratives
of the Crucifixion in the Gospels avoid using the word 'death.' Such
expressions as He 'gave up the ghost,' or the like, are used, implying
what is elsewhere distinctly asserted, that His death was His offering
of Himself, the result of His own volition, not of exhaustion or of
torture. Thus, even in dying, He showed Himself the Lord of Life and
the Master of Death. Men indeed fastened Jesus to the Cross, but He
died, not because He was so fastened, but because He willed to 'make
His soul an offering for sin.' Bound as it were to a rock in the midst
of the ocean, He, of His own will, and at His own time, bowed His head,
and let the waves of the sea of death roll over it.

III. The triumphant divine paradox of life given and death conquered
through a death.

Jesus is 'Prince' in the sense of being source of life to mankind, just
because He died. Hie death is the death of Death. His apparent defeat
is His real victory.

By His death He takes away our sins.

By His death He abolishes death.

The physical fact remains, but all else which makes the 'sting of
death' to men is gone. It is no more a solitude, for He has died, and
thereby He becomes a companion in that hour to every lover of His. Its
darkness changes into light to those who, by 'following Him,' have,
even there, 'the light of life.' This Samson carried away the gates of
the prison on His own strong shoulders when He came forth from it. It
is His to say, 'O death! I will be thy plague.'

By His death He diffuses life.

'The Spirit was not given' till Jesus was 'glorified,' which
glorification is John's profound synonym for His crucifixion. When the
alabaster box of His pure body was broken, the whole house of humanity
was filled with the odour of the ointment.

So the great paradox becomes a blessed truth, that man's deepest sin
works out God's highest act of Love and Pardon.



THE HEALING POWER OF THE NAME

'And His name through faith in His name hath made this man strong, whom
ye see and know: yea, the faith which is by Him hath given him this
perfect soundness in the presence of you all.'--ACTS iii. 16.

Peter said, 'Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power
or holiness we had made this man to walk?' eagerly disclaiming being
anything else than a medium through which Another's power operated.
Jesus Christ said, 'That ye may know that the Son of Man hath power on
earth to forgive sins, I say unto thee, Arise, take up thy bed, and
walk'--unmistakably claiming to be a great deal more than a medium. Why
the difference? Jesus Christ did habitually in His miracles adopt the
tone on which Moses once ventured when he smote the rock and said, 'Ye
rebels! must _we_ bring the water for you?' and he was punished for it
by exclusion from the Promised Land. Why the difference? Moses was 'in
all his house as a servant, but Christ as a Son over His own house';
and what was arrogance in the servant was natural and reasonable in the
Son.

The gist of this verse is a reference to Jesus Christ as a source of
miraculous power, not merely because He wrought miracles when on earth,
but because from heaven He gave the power of which Peter was but the
channel. Now it seems to me that in these emphatic and singularly
reduplicated words of the Apostle there are two or three very important
lessons which I offer for your consideration.

I. The first is the power of the Name.

Now the Name of which Peter is speaking is not the collocation of
syllables which are sounded 'Jesus Christ.' His hearers were familiar
with the ancient and Eastern method of regarding names as very much
more than distinguishing labels. They are, in the view of the Old
Testament, attempts at a summary description of things by their
prominent characteristics. They are condensed definitions. And so the
Old Testament uses the expression, the 'Name' of God, as equivalent to
'that which God is manifested to be.' Hence, in later days--and there
are some tendencies thither even in Scripture--in Jewish literature
'the Name' came to be a reverential synonym for God Himself. And there
are traces that this peculiar usage with regard to the divine Name was
beginning to shape itself in the Church with reference to the name of
Jesus, even at that period in which my text was spoken. For instance,
in the fifth chapter we read that the Apostles 'departed from the
council rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the
Name,' and we find at a much later date that missionaries of the Gospel
are described by the Apostle John as going forth 'for the sake of the
Name.'

The name of Christ, then, is the representation or embodiment of that
which Christ is declared to be for us men, and it is that Name, the
totality of what He is manifested to be, in which lies all power for
healing and for strengthening. The Name, that is, the whole Christ, in
His nature, His offices, His work, His Incarnation, His Life, His
Death, Resurrection, Session at the right hand of God--it is this
Christ whose Name made that man strong, and will make us strong.
Brethren, let us remember that, while fragments of the Name will have
fragmentary power, as the curative virtue that resides in any substance
belongs to the smallest grain of it, if detached from the mass--whilst
fragments of 

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