Prayer

Almighty God, thou hast called us to sing songs in the wilderness. How can we sing the Lord's songs in a strange land? But thou dost help us. By thy grace dwelling in our hearts and burning there like a sacred flame, we are enabled to sing even at the grave-side, and to triumph over death. There is no wilderness where thou art. Thy presence is heaven; thy touch is security; thy smile is freedom. This we know through Jesus Christ, thy Son, from whom we have all our best intelligence respecting thee; standing beside him, we can call thee "Father"; we can all say with one voice, "Our Father." We can look up unto thee, and expect much from thee, when we stand beside the Cross of Christ. We say, If thou hast given unto us thy Son, what is there which thou canst keep back? Thou hast given all in him. May we think of this with a wise heart, and seize its precious truth with both hands, and live upon that truth as upon the bread which cometh down from heaven. All the promises of God are yea and amen in Christ Jesus. Having him, we have all things—yea, now our spirits are in heaven. Show us more deeply this living truth! We are living upon the clouds; we are building in the dust; we are trying to arrest the wind and make a friend of it: we are in error, and our life is one succession of mistakes, unless we be in the Son of God as the branch is in the vine. Lead us into such sympathy with him as shall amount to identification, so that no one shall know which is the Christian and which the Christ, because of the ineffable purity, the sweet resignation, and the continual obedience of our lives. We would be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect; we would be holy as God the Holy One is holy. In this desire we live. It is so much its own answer; the prayer itself is liberty; the wish uplifts us to the skies. We praise thee for desires that are not earthly, for aspirations that scorn the boundaries of sense. Heaven is our origin declared. In these upliftings of the soul we know our Father, and we say, "This is the image of God and the likeness of the Eternal." We are not children of the dust. Thou hast given us a habitation of clay which thou wilt take down and lay back again where thou didst find it; but the burning fire, the eternal flame, the spirit kindred to thine own, thou wilt also lift up to the source and fountain of its being. Thus are we drawn down with the one hand and lifted up with the other. May the lifting up be greater than the drawing down, that we may be conscious of an upward movement of the soul, a desire that will not be satisfied with the rivers of earth and the deceptions and vanities of time. Thou art taking us onward mile by mile along the fast-unfolding road. There are more mile-stones behind us than in front of us on this life-journey; we see the end; we see the opening grave. Teach us that this is not our rest, that the grave cannot detain the soul, but only our lower selves—the dust gone back to dust. Inspire us with the Spirit of Christ; fill us with the Apostolic enthusiasm that said, "To die is gain"; then shall our life upon earth be the richer for our anticipations of immortality and our labour more continuous and more complete because of our assured rest. Pity us every one! We have done what we ought not to have done. The Lord look upon us from the Cross of his Son and publish this day an amnesty, through the righteousness which was magnified on the Cross and the condescension and the pity illustrated there, to all the souls burdened and chain-bound that sigh for liberty. Amen.

Acts 28:30-31

30. 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.

Two Years In Rome

This is an abrupt close. It is not the less suggestive on that account. By this time we ought to be independent of the historian and to be able to write Paul's diary with our own hand. If we have made the most of our opportunities, we ought to be able now to say what Paul is doing every day in the week. There are some friends we need not consult because we know exactly what they would say under the circumstances which constitute our perplexity. They are with us for ever. We know precisely how they would address themselves to every embarrassment. Were the case one in which the least taint of meanness could be found, we could see, though they had been dead these dozen years, how their faces would burn with holy anger. Were we to lay before them some proposition that halted in its logic or that turned almost imperceptibly aside in its morality, we could hear their tones of judgment, direction, and inspiration, and see by the expressive eye where they would cry shame upon us if we yielded one millionth part of a second to the enemy. It is needless to go to them in the flesh and say, "Such and such are the circumstances; what would you advise?" We know their souls; they are in us, part of us; by a marvellous metempsychosis they have been transformed into us, and they are breathing and burning in the secret tabernacle of our own life. It is so with the Apostle Paul. The historian pays us a compliment in condensing into two little verses the industry of two years in Rome, as if he should say, "You know how the years would be occupied: count the hours, and set down every one of them as an act of industry; count the days, and see them shining every moment with some new hope, or singing every hour with some new or old but enlarging song." We miss our advantages so much. We seem never to get to know our minister, our friend, our fellow-traveller: we have to be introduced to one another every time we meet. We have lost the faculty of observation. We ought not now—having studied the Acts of the Apostles verse by verse these two years and more gone, every Sunday morning in this house—we ought not now to be ignorant of how Paul would spend his two years. He has shown us his whole plan and scheme. You know where to find him—within the shadow of the Cross; in what spirit he will be working—the spirit of aspiration and self-sacrifice; with what hope he will be serving—the hope of saving some. A prisoner who has a case on appeal—having reached the city where the case is to be heard and having two years to spend before the case will come on—how will he occupy himself during that period of waiting? If you inquire about a stranger, you will say, "He ought to be well prepared when the case does come on; he will spend his time in consulting the wisest authorities; there will be nothing wanting in his case; having all that time upon his hands, he will revise every point, reconstruct the whole, examine every link in the chain; and when Nero throws open the door of the court and says he is ready, the prisoner will also be ready with perfectness of preparation." Is Paul occupied in getting up his case? Read the thirty-first verse: "Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ." At the last as at the first,—just the same. The first is the last, the last is the first, in all great personalities, in all infinite oaths and vows. He is not dying in those verses; he will succeed in his appeal, if the appeal be ever heard. Probably the appeal will never come on; should it come on, the respondents may not appear, and the case may be dismissed. Paul will certainly leave Rome this time, though he will be seized afterwards and brought back on another charge; and a little way beyond the city gates the gleaming sword will fall upon his neck and sever from him his head. But that crisis is not represented in those two verses. Paul is waiting: and waiting to him at Athens meant preaching; waiting in Rome means preaching. Holiday-taking means evangelisation in the case of a man who lived to die and who was never content unless the altar fire was burning up all that he counted dear in this present life. But in other cities Paul went about finding opportunities, opening doors and boldly entering in. Is he doing that now during those two years in Rome? Observe the construction of the sentence and make your own inference. "Paul dwelt"—Paul "received all that came in unto him." That is not the old speech; it was not customary for Paul to be described in passive moods. He was always active, energetic, aggressive, almost violent, almost mad; now he "receives all that come in unto him." An incidental and grammatical way of indicating a very solemn fact: Paul was in prison; Paul could not go where he himself would choose. He had a lodging—probably paid for him by kind friends,—but he was bound to the soldier, and he could only receive the congregations that came to him. He could not now stand up in public places and make his own opportunity and create his own great responsibility: he was a prisoner-preacher, and could only expound the kingdom to the congregations that voluntarily came to him to hear what he had to say.

But Paul occupied his two years in Rome in doing something more than preaching. He would have been but a name today had he not occupied considerable portions of the term of his imprisonment in writing his immortal epistles. Writing lives. You cannot tell where a scrap of paper may be found again. Only a few can ever hear the living voice. Though a man should preach to thousands for forty or fifty years regularly, a very small portion of the human race can have come under the ministry of his voice; but the writing lives, waits, travels, represents him in some small degree; is a kind of body in which his thought-life lives for ever. What should we have known of Paul but for the Epistles? The Epistles may be said, in some considerable sense, to have created the theology of the Church. How wonderful that we should have in the Gospels but a narrative—a narrative in which some persons can find discrepancies and incoherences; a narrative at the best full of gaps and disappointments, pausing where we want it to flow on like a river, stopping when our excitement is agony, and in the Epistles should have but a few letters. This is Divine; there is no scheme in this, or plan, or long-headed foresight; this is God's nature, God's method; this is the glory cf heavenly truth. Impostors write elaborate systems, watch the relation of parts, the distribution and proportion of what they are about; labour at their work so as to defy the critic. But in this New Testament—why, there is no wild boar of an unbeliever who has not imagined himself capable of rushing through the Book and crushing it under his broad feet. This is God's glorious way—a little narrative, a beautiful parable, a sudden miracle, an outgoing and ejaculation of strength that startles the ignorant and the undevout, not being in harmony with the Infinite, to whom there can be no surprise, and a few letters written to scattered and persecuted believers. These are our documents; they have been torn, cut, proscribed, burned, damned; but they lift themselves up again and say, "Why do the heathen rage?" They are still with us, our sweetest comfort, bread that our hunger longs for, richest when we are poorest, gardens blooming and burning upon graves like the bush that enshrined the God of Abraham.

During the first year of his imprisonment at Rome, Paul wrote his letter to the Philippians. What an insight it will give us into his life at Rome if we can have a peep into that letter! We know that Paul will tell the Philippians everything, because they loved him so much, and gave him so much, and lived in him and he in them. So if we can get hold of that letter to Philippi, we shall not need Luke to write down for us, after the fashion of a diary, what the tireless worker was doing. The letter is at hand! Remember the writer is at Rome, may never leave it: may be slain in the city. Open the letter, and give us a word or two from it! In the twelfth verse we read: "I would ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me"—he makes nothing of them where we should have made a great whine and moan—"have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel." He never leaves his subject; he had no outside engagements; in prison or out of prison, on the sea or in the city, Paul was occupied with one theme, which he called "the gospel." Read another line from the letter if you can—read the twenty-eighth verse: "in nothing terrified by your adversaries." He speaks to the Philippians as if they were in prison; the encouragement comes from the man with whom we were about to sympathise. But he has suffered so much now that he has come to see the other side of the tragedy. It is possible to suffer so much, and to accept the suffering in the right spirit, that really the sorrow becomes the beginning of truest joy. So Paul, figuratively speaking, lifts up his head again, gives the chain another lurch as he lays the bound hand upon the paper, and says: "In nothing terrified by your adversaries.... For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake." Why, he might have been liberated. Whilst he was writing this he was feeling the burden of the chain.

Can we have another line from the letter? Take the fourth verse of the fourth chapter: "Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice." When we opened the letter we said: "Where is there a man amongst us with voice plaintive enough to read the minor music?" We quieted ourselves into a deeper peace that we might listen to the voice of the man whose life was one long sorrow; and when we came to the very third verse of the letter—speaking of it in its modern form—we heard the man say, "I thank." This is how we are disappointed in our expectations. He is the only cheerful man in the company; he gives the key note of the song; he says, "I have seen all the black sea, all the deep waters; I have seen all the devil can do, and after all he is a poor, poor enemy; a mean foe, with a sword all handle, and with an aim of a blind man." Was all this merely sentiment? Was there anything like substance under it? Was this the foam which a child can make in a pool, or was it the foam that is found upon great billows, infinite volumes of water? Read Philippians 1:21, and you will find the basis line upon which the whole is built: "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." That reads like logic; there is the substance and sinuousness of reason about it. He uses reason: he says, "I am in a strait betwixt two—fear ye the appeal may go against me?" Not a word about the appeal—"I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful fur you." There is not a word about the appeal; there is no reference to Nero, young fiend! The only reference is to Christ and to the Church. Was there not great basis of doctrine under all this high sentiment? Let us read in the second chapter from the fifth verse to the eleventh—a passage which Paul himself alone could read in the right tone. This is a prisoner, and this is the prisoner's exhortation: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." That is the Christian theology; that is the rock on which the Church is built. But was Paul speaking after the manner of a man who had counted the cost of this? Did he really know what he was doing? Was he in very deed quite sane? Read the third chapter from the seventh verse to the eleventh: "What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count"—he was a reckoner; he was not going without book and pencil—"Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." But was he one of those men who had nothing to lose? Hear him in the same third chapter: "If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; concerning zeal, persecuting the Church; touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless." In quoting those passages and dwelling mentally upon them, always remember the writer and the writer's circumstances, and thus the letter will be multiplied a thousandfold in meaning and in influence. Reading this letter to the Philippians, I have no hesitation in saying that men with such views cannot be in prison. The views themselves are like a great firmament. A man who has great ideas never can be in prison, or in narrow circumstances, or in poverty, or in pain; he lives in another world; he has bread to eat that the world knoweth not of. Such men cannot want. Paul says in the eleventh verse of the fourth chapter, "Not that I speak in respect of want." They had sent him something, and when he opened the little parcels out, he said, "Your care of me hath flourished again.... Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." It is only for a moment; I tarry but a night; I shall be gone in the morning. "I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Nero is a poor man, compared with his prisoner. Such men cannot die; when the body dies, they are lifted above the pain by great convictions and great hopes. "Brethren," said Paul, "be followers together of me.... For our conversation [or our citizenship] is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall change our vile [or common] body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." Ask a child going home if he is sorry to go; ask the friend, who is anxiously awaiting the coming of the completing heart, whether, as the time draws near, the pain of sorrow deepens. No more can the Christian die; he has to speak of death as men speak a foreign tongue; there is an accent of strangeness in the very utterance of the word. Death is abolished; death is swallowed up in victory; death is gain.

Do you admire Paul in these circumstances? Do you say, "This is heroism, this is grandeur; this is a man the world ought to remember with gratitude"? Do you know how he came to be the man you admire? We shall lose much if we admire the servant and forget the Master. Paul was only Paul because Christ was Christ: "I am the Vine, ye are the branches.... Without me ye can do nothing." We must not lose sight of the Son of Mary, Son of man, Son of God. We admire Paul; we uncover our heads before him; we say, "This is moral majesty." What made it? The Cross. When Paul receives our homage and acknowledges it, he points us in one direction, and says, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." If the Cross makes such men, preach it: it is the eternal doctrine.

Chapter 106

Prayer

Almighty God, thou art good unto us in Jesus Christ thy Son with eternal and unmeasurable goodness. We think we see it all, and, behold, we see but a little part thereof. Who can see, or search out, the Almighty unto perfection? Thou art able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. We bless thee for this infinity of goodness; its very grandeur overpowers us; its very sublimity makes us pray. We thank thee that we are in the house dedicated to the proclamation of this infinite goodness. This house of thine is better than any house of ours; it is our Father's house; it is all good houses in one—glorified into a centre of vital fellowship and immortal hope. From this great height we see the sun rise; we behold the proofs of its coming, and we are assured that the whole earth shall be filled with light and that the morning glory shall chase every shadow away. Grant unto us bright visions today. May we see clouds shaping themselves into radiant gates opening upon infinite mornings and summers. May we see heaven open and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God. Then shall we know that all things are made secure in him. We shall not be without a centre, or a corner-stone, or a binding personality; but all things shall spring out of the Son of man and return to him and receive their glory from him, and we shall know the mystery which hath centred in the living Christ, the living kingdom of God. Uplift our minds to great eminence; broaden and heighten our understanding; send upon us the power of unutterable thought that shall make us dumb with a sense of sublimity and blind us with tears expressive of unworthiness and penitence. Thou givest great things; today give us great thinkings, great outlooks, great hopes and certainties of faith, so that today we may begin the better summer, the great brightness of the soul, the glory of the upper world that shall express itself in the abundance of a great harvest. We pray for one another. Thou dost regard the prayers that are intercessions, the cryings inspired by love and upheld by faith. We pray for the weary man that his strength may daily return; for the sated and outworn man that he may see such change of life and all the purpose of his being as shall create within him new appetences, higher, godlier desires, so that he may begin again and forget his satiety in a new and sacred hunger. We pray for the man who feels in himself the down-going of the body, who has lost the faith and force of earlier time and who is conscious of a decay he cannot express in terms; the Lord send him reviving of spirit—that quickening and certitude of hope which can impart strength to the fainting heart. We pray for those whose purpose is good, but whose power of execution is small; whose veneration is high, but who fail to carry out that which is noblest in worship in that which is purest in sacrifice. The Lord look upon us every one, from every land speaking every language; whatsoever may be our estate and condition, may we know that we are enclosed by the same firmament of light, breathed upon by the same spirit of vitality, fed and nourished by roots which thou thyself hast made to grow. Grant us thy peace, grant us thy light; banish our sin as thou dost banish darkness by the dawn. Send us help from the sanctuary: even when faint, may we be pursuing; when laid down in the dust and the sword of God hanging above us, may we have the faith which says, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." Lead us down the few remaining miles, through the few green lanes and blossoming places that lie between us and the grave, up a steep or two and across some highland, and then gently down into the valley at whose other end there is no gate opening upon this world, but a great door opening upon a better; and may we as we pass through that portal be enabled to say, "By the grace of God, I am what I am. I the chief of sinners am, but Jesus redeemed me and washed me in his precious blood. I die to live O death, where is thy sting?" Amen.

Acts 28:30-31

30. 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.

Apostolic Communications

We are now inquiring how Paul spent the two whole years which he remained in Rome awaiting the result of the appeal which he had made to Cæsar. We have read the general words: "Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ." We have not felt satisfied with that general statement, and therefore we ventured to inquire somewhat into the detail of the Apostolic labour in Rome. We found, by the help of the Epistles and by the assistance of learned men, that during his two years' residence in Rome Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians, the letter to the Colossians, with its postscript note to Philemon, and also the letter to the Ephesians. No reference is made to those epistolary and immortal labours in the concluding verses of the Acts of the Apostles; we simply have a summary given in the words just quoted: "Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ." Not a word is said about the letters; yet the letters constitute this day the corner-stones of all Christian theology. If we could see the letters, we have said, we should discover something respecting the man. We have looked into the Epistle to the Philippians: let us look into the Epistle to the Ephesians. In the third chapter of that epistle and the first verse, he describes himself as "Paul, the prisoner of Jesus Christ for you Gentiles." In the fourth chapter of the same epistle and the first verse, he describes himself as "the prisoner of the Lord." In the sixth chapter and the twentieth verse, he represents himself as "an ambassador in bonds." He thus speaks of his chain and yet does not speak of it; he uses it for another purpose than merely to describe it. So much depends upon the emphasis, which is of course lost in reading the writing of another man. He is a prisoner, but he is "the prisoner of Jesus Christ"; he is a prisoner, but he is "the prisoner of the Lord"; he is in bonds, but he is "an ambassador"—a king's agent, a man sent with a seal and with an authority. This is the way in which to use a chain, a sign of degradation, an infirmity of any kind, whether of the flesh, or of the spirit, or of the estate; whether it be bodily weakness, whether it be penury, poverty, difficulty—embarrassment of any kind: the way to use it is to attach it to the infinite name and power and grace. The chain would be very heavy if we could not hook it on at one end to the infinite strength of God. Paul does not whine about himself being a prisoner, a captive, a bondsman, a sufferer: he acknowledges the chain, but he says, "It is the Lord's chain." He is not a prisoner of Cæsar, but a prisoner of Christ. Thus by using great names and yielding himself to the inspiration of great thoughts, he shakes off the chain and stands up in Divine and illimitable liberty. That is the way to use Christian faith and to turn Christian doctrine to practical advantage. We dissociate ourselves from the current of power, from the streams of grace, yea, from the great Fountain of sustenance and comfort, and then mourn like lost things in the wilderness, and say, adding lies to ingratitude, "The Lord hath forgotten to be gracious." The sweet Gospel coming up from Rome, the tender message sent by the Apostle's voice and hand, we have before us. There is the chain, there is your infirmity; no mistake about the thorn in the flesh, no mistake about your poverty, embarrassment, and difficulty in life; no mistake either about the temptations that assail the sanctuary of the soul; but all things must be sanctified by the word of God and prayer, and the Lord's place in the discipline and education and final perfecting of human life must be adoringly acknowledged and must be accepted as the one inspiration which alone can bear life's burdens and sustain patiently life's distressing mysteries.

But what a shepherd's heart had Paul! His heart seems to spread itself right out in his letters to the Philippians, the Ephesians, and the Colossians. Look at his care of souls: Ephesians 1:16-23; there he says: "I cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers." What would he that the Ephesian Christians should have? "The spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of God"; he would have "the eyes of their understanding enlightened, that they might know what is the hope of Christ's calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to them-ward who believe." How the sentences roll from his eloquent tongue when he begins to speak of the "Father of glory," and the "God of our Lord Jesus Christ," and the grace of Heaven! How language is lifted up into new dignities and made to assume the very majesty of thought! Paul's shepherdly heart created great shepherdly expressions. He asked no mean gifts for the Christian soul, but all heaven's riches. When we ask mean things, we do not pray; our request only becomes prayer when we claim the heavens. A mean prayer is not a prayer.

Then his care for the Church as a whole. In Ephesians 4:32, he seems to sum up his desires in the words: "And be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." He lays an infinite line even upon social relations, differences, and controversies, and rules them into order by the very grandeur of his appeal. Did any other apostle ever use the word "tender-hearted"? It is not a word: it is a speech, it is a poem, it is a theology. Yet people have admired the Apostle's logic as if at the expense of his wondrous graciousness. My own feeling is, as a student of the Pauline life and doctrine, that none could love like Paul.

Not only have we care of souls and care for the Church as a whole, but we have care for the family. Not one member of the household is omitted: "Husbands, love your wives"; "Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath";" Children, obey your parents"; "Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters"; "Masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him." What a bishop's heart! what an illustration of Christianity! This religion takes care of us all; it will not omit one from its great prayer. The poor should know this, and the so-called working-man, and all persons who are in distress or are at a disadvantage; the weak and the lonely, the little child and the old man—Christianity would gather all within its great arms and bless the whole world with peace and hope. Learn from the prayers of Paul what Christianity is always seeking to do.

Paul also wrote the Epistle to the Colossians during his imprisonment at Rome. In that letter he uses an appeal full of tenderness. In the very last line of the letter, he puts in a sentence of three words: "Remember my bonds." "Remember my bonds"—it was enough. A word is enough to those whose hearts are in right tune and who keep themselves abreast of the information which the history of the Church daily supplies. How did the great Apostle regard his fellow-labourers? Did he so tower above them as to be unconscious of their existence? Read Colossians 4:10 : "Marcus, sister's son to Barnabas, if he come unto you, receive him." You remember the controversy with John Mark; you remember Paul's welcome to the young man at a given time in the Apostolic history; and. now, as the day is wearing westward, Paul says, "And Marcus, if he come unto you, receive him." Then (twelfth verse), "Epaphras, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, saluteth you, always labouring"—hotly, burningly, and—"fervently for you in prayers." And what was the burden of his prayers? Can they be summed up in one pregnant sentence? Yes: "that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God." Then in the fourteenth verse, "Luke, the beloved physician, and Demas, greet you." Paul did not forget anybody; Paul was looking when persons thought his eyes were closed. No touch of a gentle hand ever escaped his notice, who stands next to Christ in the wisdom and penetration of his love. And if the servant does not forget, can he forget who is Master? The Lord is not unrighteous to forget your work of faith and labour of love. You praise the minuteness of Paul's recollection. Paul shone with a borrowed light. When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, he will remember who visited him, who gave him drink when he was in thirst, food when he was in hunger, and rest when he was weary. Admire Paul, repeat with glowing emphasis everything that lifts up his memory as with the breadth of an inspiration; but remember that Paul himself lay down in humblest depths of lowliness before Another, and said that Other was King: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."

Paul also wrote the letter to Philemon. That letter was a kind of postscript to the letter to the Church at Colosse. It reveals a great deal, though in comparatively few words; it shows what a slave-owner's power was in ancient days. Onesimus was a slave of Philemon. Philemon could have thrown him into the water, and there was no law to ask what had become of the slave. But Onesimus had been freed by the Apostle Paul during his two years' imprisonment at Rome, and Paul would do nothing without the permission of Philemon; but he entreats Philemon as "Paul the aged." Cunning writer! cunning user of words! He was not "Paul the aged" when labour was to be done, when suffering was to be undergone, when tyrants were to be faced; when lions were to be fought, he was Paul the immortal; but when a slave was to be reinstated, taken back in the old house, Paul thought that if he represented himself as an old man, it would have a happy effect upon the sensibilities of Philemon. Paul seemed to say, "You can use my circumstances in any way that will help a good cause: call me rich or poor, describe me under any names and titles you please that represent the actual facts of the case, providing I can soften human stubbornness, or make the way of a fellow-creature broader and easier in life." I do not know that Paul would have cared to have been called "Paul the aged." He looked very old sometimes; but at the touch of duty, at the sight of a new opportunity, under the spell of an awakened memory, he sprang into fire again—young, lithe, strong, invincible. Yet he is willing to describe himself as Paul the aged, because that might count for something and moisten the eyes of Philemon. Talk about the equality of men, and the harmonisation of classes, and the over-getting of social difficulties; read the seventeenth verse of the letter to Philemon: "If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself." This is said about a run-away, penitent slave! Why, he could not have given a nobler introduction to Cæsar himself had Cæsar been going in the direction of Philemon's dwelling-place. "Receive him as myself"—what a delicate tribute that to old hospitalities and comradeships, to morning prayers and evening talks! "Receive him as myself"—I remember how I used to be received, how the door was pushed back upon its hinges almost with anger that it was a door that could be construed into separating me from the house; I remember the warmth, the old talk, the genuine love, the free confidence—receive Onesimus as if he were Paul. These are the eternal miracles of Christianity, these the marvels that make men open their eyes in unutterable astonishment. This is what Christianity would do today: bring back every man that had wronged you, and make him say, "I was wrong, pity me"; bring back every wanderer and reconstruct the household circle. Christianity harmonises the classes, not by dragging any class down, but by lifting all classes up. How much can be put into a postscript! This little note was written for the purpose of introducing a slave to his master. Paul said, with the audacity of an invincible faith, "If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee aught, put that on mine account"—a man who had not where to lay his head! But he knew he could pay all such obligations as that: "I Paul have written it with mine own hand"—as if he had taken the pen out of the fingers of the amanuensis and had written this little piece himself—"I Paul have written it with mine own hand; I will repay it"—pay a slave's debt! Then comes the touch of closest love—with a touch also of righteousness in it,—"Albeit I do not say to thee how thou owest unto me even thine own self besides." Yes, these are the great debts that exist between man and man— not a debt of gold, as much of which can be put in one scale as in the other so that both shall be held in equipoise, but "thou owest unto me even thine own self." These are the debts which people owe to the great authors, and the great thinkers, and the true preachers of the day—they owe themselves. They never knew they were men till they were touched by fire from heaven, until they were reminded of their true quality by a voice inspired. "Thou owest unto me even thine own self"—by the grace of God; I have prayed thee out of despair into hope; I have called thee out of weariness into strength; I have led thee from darkness to light; take it back: if he owe anything, call it my debt: I will put that right; but if we do make a balance sheet, I will write one line on the other side—"Thyself."'

These are the letters; is the writer a fanatic? I will believe it when fanatics reason as he does. Is he a self-seeker? I will believe it when self-seekers suffer as he did. When you want to know what Christians are, do not look at us, but look at Paul. We ought to follow him as he followed Christ: he told us expressively to do so; but we dare not say, "Look upon us and behold Christianity"; but we dare say, "Read Paul's life every line; study it night and day the year round; read his letters sentence by sentence; watch his endurances, sacrifices, activities; sum him up into the real total of quality and power, and look at him, and by his character and service we will risk the Christian controversy." How he taught the doctrine of forgiveness! Why, that is the supreme doctrine of Christianity. If you have never forgiven anybody, you are not a Christian; if you have not forgiven everybody, you are not a Christian. In order to complete the work of forgiveness, there must be consent upon the other side; there must also be penitence upon the other side, where wrong has been done. Still we are called to the spirit of forgiveness, and if we ask why we should forgive, the answer is, "Because we have been forgiven." If any man can stand up and say, "I have no desire to be forgiven, I have nothing for which to be forgiven; I am whiter than the snow, purer than the light, taintless as the morning new-born in heaven," we have no speech to make to him; but if he stand in common clay on our footing, and know that he has wronged everybody that he ever came in contact with in some form or other in word, or thought, or deed—if he say, "I am a sinner, but God has forgiven me," Paul no sooner hears him say that than he adds, "Then forgive as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."

I know not what agnosticism may teach, or what socialism may propagate and proclaim, or what atheism may have to say to the ages; but, oh, it will have to say more than I have ever heard of it saying before it silence this transcendent music or put to flight this radiant and healing angel of Christianity.

Chapter 107

Prayer

Almighty God, thou art our refuge and strength. They are strong who live in God; they are immortal who touch thine eternity with faith and love and hope. They cannot die: the sword cannot cut them to their destruction, nor can they be blown away by the great wind, nor can the lion devour them. Behold, they are hidden in God's pavilion, and under the shadow of the wings Divine do they put their trust. We bless thee for the great strong ones who have led the way. We love their names; we love to think of their wonderful story and to read it until our hearts glow with the fire which made them hot. May we follow them as they followed Christ! May our hold upon Christ be complete! We do not now desire only to touch him: we would that he might dwell in us, abide with us, take up His abode with us, sup with us in lifelong festival. This desire is thy creation. This desire is not our own by origin, but it is now our own by adoption and conviction, and by all the delight that flows from its possession. Behold, this also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts. Fill us with this desire; may it be the supreme wish of our soul. Then shall it become its own answer, and the whole soul shall be filled with the light of God. We bless thee for all words that call us upward; we would answer all the challenges that draw our souls towards greater liberty and purer light. We know that these challenges are the voice of God in the soul. We bless thee that we are no longer deaf to thy calls. We hear them now as we never heard them before—not only their great tones, telling of thy majesty, but their gentle whisperings, breathing the very tenderness of thy love. Blessed are they whose ears can hear, whose faculties are not dead, but are alive with prayer and burning with expectation. Let thy word be unto us various as the need of our life. Thine is an infinite word, and truly ours is an infinite necessity. Let thy word come to us according as we are able to bear it. We expect more from it; it is a great word, and no man hath ventured to name it, nor can the tongue of man tell it, or the heart of man conceive it. Thou wilt surprise us with greater revelations; thou wilt astonish the eye with light; thou wilt make the heart fill itself with reverent amazement in gazing upon the wonders of thy love. Yet the darkness is thine as well as the light. Thou hast a purpose in keeping us ignorant a while. We are growing even in the darkness; we are preparing even when we are not being surprised; the quietness is a mission; the standing still is progress; the waiting for God is the winning of a battle. Dry our tears when we dare not touch them with our own hand; speak comfortably to us when the affliction is too sore; make our bed; give us a song in the night time; cause the springs of water to burst forth when our thirst is hottest; lead us by the way that is right; never explain thyself to us, but fill us with thy love. The Lord's mercy be brighter than the summer light; the Lord's word come to us with the pomp of its own eternity and with the condescension of its infinite friendliness. Fill the house with thy glory. Let the angels all come; let the spirits of the just made perfect have some relation to us which we can, how dimly soever, realise; and may we feel that we are not orphans, waifs, lost things blown by the heedless wind, but part of the whole family in heaven and on earth.

We pray this prayer at the Cross, and at the Cross we tarry till the answer come. Amen.

Acts 28:30-31

30. 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.

A Retrospect and a Prospect

For further light upon the fate of the Apostle Paul, we must be indebted to the labours of learned inquirers. There are men who have made a special study of this subject, and to them we must look for fact and guidance. In the year 63 Paul was released, and returned to the East to continue his evangelistic and apostolic work. In July, 64, a great fire occurred at Rome, the fire being enkindled by the emperor himself, according to the testimony of the most learned historians and witnesses, but falsely charged upon the Christians. A great anti-Christian persecution thereupon arose. Christians were scattered everywhere; many were arrested and slain. Some think that the Apostle Paul visited the Britannic Isles, and that the great cathedral church of London—St. Paul's—points to that fact. His name would certainly be well known in England. Soldiers who had guarded him at Rome were drafted to London, Chester, York, and other military centres in England, and they could not but speak of the most illustrious prisoner ever given to their charge. About these movements we have no certain record. Paul was probably apprehended at Ephesus and conveyed to Rome, where he wrote his last letter, the Second Epistle to Timothy—wrote it with his dying hand. It is something to have that last letter. It reads like the summary of a lifetime; it reads, too, like a will. A will!—what had the Apostle to leave? To that letter we must turn for distinct information regarding our saintly hero. The days are few and solemn now; the hour of home-going is now chiming. We had better listen to him now, for presently the voice will cease. He knew that he was writing as a dying man. In chapter 2Timothy 4:6 of the letter he says, "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand"—"I am bound like a thing that is going to be laid upon the fire: my limbs are bound to one another; my arms are lashed round my body with iron hoops—I am just waiting to be flung." What will he say now to a young minister? He will frighten the young man; he will utterly appal the rising youth who is supposed to be nearest to him and to have some kind of right to his mantle. Surely he will adopt another tone: he would hide the afflictions, say as little as possible about them, and would endeavour to allure rather by tender promise the young man who is to succeed him in the Apostolic function.

Even whilst the shadows were gathering around our hero he had a clear view of what he had done. In the seventh verse of the fourth chapter he says, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." What an epitaph! Truly we ourselves are witnesses of all these things. We could not have come upon this testimony from the outside with any familiarity or sympathy or recognition of the infinite scope and pathos of its meaning; but coming to it from our study of the whole record, having been with the Apostle night and day and seen him month after month in the great labour, we feel that he has at last selected the very words which most profoundly and most graphically describe the wonderful course through which he has passed. That is something. Were we to come upon a text like this from the outside, we might call it boastful, self-conscious, deeply dyed with the spirit of egotism; but when we come upon it along the historical line, when we know the man in and out—intellectually, spiritually—when we understand somewhat of his genius, and have felt the wonderfulness of his gracious temper, and have seen the long continuance of his inexhaustible patience, we feel that this is an inspired summary, that it is God that speaks rather than the mere man himself. We can testify he has well fought a good fight. He never shrank away from the contest; he was never wanting when the opportunity shaped itself into a crisis; he never said, "Pity me and let the blows be fewer and weaker"; he never asked for quarter; he will die a victor. You cannot kill such men!

Best of all, he says, "I have kept the faith." That explains all the rest. But for the faith, the fighting would have been a squabble, a controversy without meaning, a conflict without dignity; the course would have been sentimental, romantic, extravagant, from the worldly point of view absurd; but having kept the faith, the fight is lifted up into a Divine battle, and the course takes rank with the movements of the planets—an infinite sweep, full of majesty, full of light. We cannot fight, or run, or do anything good and worthy except in proportion as we keep the faith. The courage is not in the hand; it is in the inner being. The explanation of life is not in circumstances; it is within that mysterious thing you call your self—a holy of holies into which even you cannot critically enter: you can only adoringly and wonderingly abide. Without the faith we may have huge pretensions, great and rushing cloud for a time, enthusiasm that looks as if it would last, but which really cannot last because of want of connection with Divine fountains and energies. Lord, increase our faith; our grip of doctrine do thou make stronger, our love of truth purer, our insight almost like thine own omniscience. This is how heroes die.

Then Paul had not only a retrospect, but a prospect. Heaven seemed to come down to meet him: "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord... shall give me." This world is not enough; the time comes when we want to lay hold upon another. This is the marvellous action of something within us which we cannot define, but which, being defined for us, we can realise, and say, "You have used the right word; you have put into articulate expression what I have been trying to say ever since I was born." That is what inspiration does, and that is how inspiration proves itself to be of heaven. It interprets us to ourselves; it finds us opening a kind of heart-mouth, trying to say something which we cannot say, and it then tells us the word we are wanting to utter, and which the moment we hear we recognise. We never could have found it, but being found for us, we say, "This is none other than the gift of God." So we have a supernatural language, a wonderful set of words which must be extremely foolish to people who do not live along the line which must necessarily complete itself in their meaning and brightness. Wonderful words they are!—"crown of righteousness"; "white linen of the saints"; "palms of victory"'; "heaven"; "home"; "New Jerusalem"; a "mountain that may not be touched," "Zion" by name; "infinite"; "everlasting." We do not use these words in the marketplace. No, but the marketplace is a small corner; it is hardly in the universe at all; it is only a little piece of the little world in which it is a speck, or is recognised by a mere name. But there comes a time in life when we want a new language—great language: crowns, thrones, principalities, dominions, powers, heavens on heavens, infinite. O madness to the worldling—necessity to the soul fire-touched, fire-stung. Do not speak of heaven till you feel your want of it, otherwise you will speak great words with a faltering tongue, and in their utterance you will spoil their meaning.

Some wonderful sources of consolation Paul opens even in this farewell letter. In the second chapter, ninth verse, he speaks of his "trouble" and of his "bonds"; but he instantly lifts up the subject as he was wont to do, saying, at the close of the verse, "but the word of God is not bound." That is a Pauline expression; doubt the pastoral epistles as to their authenticity who may, every now and then there is a touch of the old master-hand; they are a splendid imitation—so splendid as to be no imitation, but a reality. In the twelfth verse also he lifts up the subject, saying, "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us." In the thirteenth verse he lays down the sovereign doctrine which redeems the whole situation of life: "He cannot deny himself." That is the ground we occupy. We know that preaching is a failure, we know that sermons often go for nothing, we are perfectly well aware that many appeals die in the air without ever reaching the ears to which they were directed by the ardent speaker; we are perfectly aware of all this—yet "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord," because the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. We stand upon the word eternal; we do not rest upon the transient accident. What will Paul say now to his son in the faith? Surely he will say, "Child, return, I have led thee a weary way; I have spoken words to thee which must have the effect of falsehoods; let my suffering be an example to thee: return to domestic quietude and to natural obscurity." What does the will say? Read the will! We applaud earthly heroes who dying bid men fight; we are proud of them; we call them great men, and we remember their name; we quote what they say and turn it into poetic form and recite it and applaud it.

Chapter 108

Prayer

Almighty God, speak unto us, for thou hast now given unto us the hearing ear and the understanding heart. This is thy holy gift; this, indeed, is the very miracle of grace. Our faculties are now of use; we begin to see the purpose of our creation. By thy grace in Christ Jesus, we are enabled to stand in thy light, and to see somewhat of the outline of thy truth. This is a great vision; for this we bless thee with ardent love. We knew not the great world before; but now we enter into larger spaces, and enjoy boundless liberties, and feel that we are no longer children of the earth and prisoners of time, but sons of God and born for eternity. So then we are lifted up with great elevation of thought and feeling; the world in all its littleness is far below us, and the great new sky revealed by thy grace heightens and brightens above us, and we are challenged to arise and take possession of the inheritance of the saints in light. We are no longer little in our thought and bounded in our feeling and hope: we have escaped the chain, we are captives no longer; we are out in God's boundless firmament, yet are we centred to his eternal throne. The Son has made us free; therefore are we free indeed. Thou hast shown us the meaning of the letter and led us into the liberty of the spirit. It is a glorious liberty! We feel its inspiration; we would answer all its nobleness by larger service and deeper humility. Show us that thou art the Righteous One, tempering judgment with mercy. Thou wilt not overstrain us, for our strength is but weakness; thou wilt not flash upon us the intolerable glory, but reveal thyself unto us in growing light according to our growing capacity to receive it. God is Love. Thou dost remember that we are dust; thou wilt not oppress us with burdens grievous to be borne; thou knowest that our day here is a very short one, and thou hast caused it to be shorter still, by reason of the uncertainty of our possession of it. But we look onward to the other school, where the light is brighter, where the day is nightless, where the teaching is more direct; in thy light we shall there see light, and growing knowledge shall be growing humility, and growing power shall be growing service. This is our hope, and this our confidence, so that now we are but preparing for the great issue and the grand realisation. Meanwhile, let thy Book be unto us more and more precious, thy Sabbaths filled with a tenderer light, and every opportunity to know thy truth and study thy will more critical and more urgent. May we not reckon as those who have boundless time at their command, but rather as those who are uncertain of their next pulse, who are expecting the King and must be in readiness to meet him. Thus may we live under high discipline, in the enjoyment of great delight, eager with expectancy, calm with confidence, inspired by hope, yet resting in the completeness of Divine assurance. Thus shall our life be a mystery Divine, a creation of God, an infinite apocalypse. We have come from out-of-the-way places to one home this day. We represent many dwellings, but we cling to the one house which holds us all within its hospitable embrace. This is our Father's house, where there is bread enough and to spare, where the servant may become a son and the son receive duly double assurance of his sonship. We would seize the opportunity; we would rise to the inspiration of this new hope; we would dwell within the security of thy Zion and know thy banner over us is Love. Thou hast led us by a strange way: thou hast often disappointed us, but only to enrich us with still brighter hopes; thou hast set mysteries in our families which terrified us because we found no solution of their meaning; thou hast cut the heart in two and made the life sore at every point by reason of the ingratitude of some, the stubbornness and selfishness of others; in some houses thou hast turned the day into night, and afflicted the night with sevenfold darkness. But thou art leading us all the time, chastening us, mellowing us, perfecting our hearts in the riches of thy grace and enriching us with the wealth of thy love. Others are wholly at ease: they have not known the weight of darkness, the sting of disappointment, the bitterness of unspeakable woe; and therein thou hast kept from them the highest joys. They know nothing of heavenly delights, of healing after disease, of joy after sorrow, of the song that comes in the morning which succeeds the long night of waiting. We would not change our places with them; our wounds have been the beginning of health, our distresses have been the roots of our purest joys, our disappointments have led us through crooked and thorny ways right into the light where stands the eternal throne. We will always tarry at the Cross: we can rest only there; we can read all its superscriptions, but high above them all the writing of God—"Behold the Lamb, that taketh away the sins of the world." That is the writing of thine own finger; that is the Gospel of thine own heart. We read it once, and again, and still again, and as we read the light grows and the music increases, and the Lamb descends from the Cross and ascends as Intercessor into the heavens, and begins the infinite prayer of his priestly love. These are the mysteries in which we hide our littleness; these are the doors at which we wait until, opened from within, we be admitted into the inner places, the sanctuary of the heavens. Amen.

An Epitome

Today we close the Acts of the Apostles. It is not, therefore, a happy day for me. We have lived so long in the company of the great men who fill this sacred portion of the Holy Scripture that we feel as if called upon to speak a very pathetic and sad farewell. This comes of reverent familiarity with things Divine. We have not allowed the familiarity to descend into frivolity; but, having kept the sacred line of true friendship all these many days, we feel as if turning our back upon a host of friends whose comradeship we should like to have continued in all its freshness and stimulus until we enter together into the common city which is our home. Thus we leave man after man, church after church, and book after book. We no sooner begin than we end; our delight is cut off in its ecstasy, and just as our expectation begins to burn into that glad agony which the heart understands, behold, the vision ceases, and we are sent back into shadows and desert places.

Look at the Acts of the Apostles as a whole, supposing the little book to be in your hands in its unity. It is a living thing; it is like nothing but itself The Master is not in it visibly, and yet he is throbbing in every line of it influentially. It is a bush that burns. Strange looks we have seen come out of it, and voices above voices and under-voices—marvellous subtleties of tone only to be explained by the Divine and supernatural element. We have studied together the Gospel by Matthew and the Acts of the Apostles; putting the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles together, what a marvellous reproduction we have of the Pentateuch! These four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles together constitute the Pentateuch of the New Testament; and if you will take the Pentateuch of Moses with the Gospel Pentateuch and compare the one with the other, you will be struck with the marvellous analogies and correspondences between the two, which, being duly connected and interpreted, constitute an illustration of what is meant by the Divine inspiration of Holy Scripture. What have we in the second Pentateuch? How did the first Pentateuch begin? With creation. How does the second Pentateuch begin? With creation. What was the first creation? The moulding of matter, the settlement and distribution of vast spaces and lights and forces. What is the second creation? A Church, a living universe—men the planets; souls the burning suns, redeemed lives the great and immortal heavens. The Son is Creator as well as the Father; yea, the very old creation, the tabernacle of dust and light, the heavens and the earth—these were all made for the Son, by the Son; he was before all things as he is above all things, so that in his creation—a spiritual, gracious human creation—he pales the little universe and puts it into its right place—a mere speck upon the infinite being of God. So then we have our New Testament Pentateuch, and we cannot do without it, because it is fall of history; and therein it resembles the first Pentateuch—full of anecdote, story, tragedy, change, movement, colour: a wonderful beginning and the only possible beginning from the highest standpoint, not a beginning in great doctrine, profound philosophies and metaphysics,—all these lie thousands of miles along the road; no man may fly after them, or plunge into them with heedless impetuosity. We begin with matter, we begin with light and force, with water and earth, with things that fly and things that swim; and then we pass into the human tragedy, and through all the marvellous evolutions of history, we come into doctrine, philosophy, spiritual thought, the inner meaning, the marvellous music of things. So it is in the New Testament. We begin with a little Child, to what he may grow we know not; great is his name—Immanuel: God—God with us, the great God, the great Man. Now we must go forward into historical movements, activities, collisions, contradictions; now we must be lost in the centre of dusty, cloudy battlefields and then emerge into wide spaces where the summer spreads her banquet, where the air is clear of all but sweetest music. That is God's way of training the individual life. We all begin, so to say, Pentateuchally; we all have five books, or at least five chapters of history—creation, history, movement, activity, hardly knowing what we are doing—moved, touched, stung, led, and wondering how it will all issue, in what eventuation it will establish itself, and what it will prove when the process has been completed. It enriches one's thought and establishes one's heart in the tender grace of God to see how the lines of life correspond with one another: how things are matched today by things that happened yesterday; how one life is part of some other life, how one nation belongs to all the nations, and to mark how God has not been making detached links without connection or association, but has rather been fastening those links together into a great chain,—a golden chain—the first link fastened to his throne, the chain dropped down, link after link added, and, lo, it begins to rise again at the other end and comes back, and the links form a chain and the chain a circle and the centre the very throne of God. We cannot do without the historical line. Man must begin with history, he cannot begin with thinking; man must begin with toys, he cannot begin with ideas, abstract thoughts, and emotions that involve metaphysical mysteries. He must have a garden to work in, he must have a flock to keep, he must have a vineyard to dress; every night he must tell how the day has been spent; and thus he is led on into the great service, and into the fidelity that keeps no diary because it is so complete as to be beyond mere registration and beyond that book-keeping which is supposed to guarantee itself against the perfidies of felonious hands. But we must begin with the garden; man thinks he is doing something when he is tilling a garden. We must begin with objective work, outside work; it is adapted to us. The absorption, the speechless contemplation, the song without words—these are the after-comings, the marvellous transformations. Meanwhile, keep thy lamp burning, watch thy door with all faithfulness, and attend to thy little garden plot as if it were the whole of God's universe; and afterwards thou shalt come to the higher studies the nobler culture, the richer, deeper peace.

Looking at the Acts of the Apostles as a whole, what a representative book it is! What varieties of character; what contradictions; what miracles of friendship; what bringing together of things that apparently are without relation and between which cohesion is, from our stand point, simply impossible! We have marked the characters as the panorama has passed before us these years; we wonder how ever they came together, how any one book can hold them; and yet, as we have wondered, we have seen men settle into relation and complement one another so as to furnish out the whole circle with perfect accuracy of outline. We belong to one another. The hand cannot say to the foot, "I have no need of thee"; nor can the ear say to the eye, or the eye to the ear, "I have no need of thee." All those men in the moving panorama Apostolic belonged, somehow, to one another, sphered one another out into perfectness of service and endurance. The human race is not one man; one man is not the human race. The difficulty we have with ourselves and with one another is the difficulty of not perceiving that every one of us is needful to make up the sum total of God's meaning. Failing to see that, we have what is called "criticism," so that men are remarked upon as being short of this faculty, wanting in that capacity, destitute of such and such qualification, not so rich in mental gift as some other man; and thus we have such foolish talking and pointless criticism. Man is one. God made man, not men; he redeemed man, he became man. Your gift is mine; mine is yours. We are a total, not a fraction; not carping individuals, but one household built on one rock, a living temple raised upon a living Corner-stone. Why fix upon individuals and remark upon their imperfections and their shortcomings? They claim the virtues of their very critics; they leap up in the hands of their vivisectors and say, "Your life is ours; your strength should perfect our weakness." The world will not learn that lesson. The world is lost in selfishness. Christianity is now a game of selfishness, that is to say, resolving itself into "Who can get into heaven? who can safely escape into heaven?"—a question that ought never to be asked; it is the worst and meanest selfishness. Who can fight best, suffer best, give most, do most, wait most patiently?—these are the great questions which, being honestly asked by the soul, ennoble the soul that asks them, and challenge the life to the nobler services which the fancy contemplates. So the men in the Acts of the Apostles belong to one another. Think of Peter and Luke: Peter all fire; Luke quiet, thoughtful, contemplative, musing, taking observations and using them for historical purposes. Think of Paul and Barnabas; think of all the names that are within the record, and see how wondrous is the mosaic. There are only two great leaders. Were I to ask the youngest of my fellow students, now when we are closing the book, whose names occur most frequently in the Acts of the Apostles, hardly a child could hesitate in the reply—"Peter and Paul." They seem to overshadow everybody; their names burn most ardently and lustrously on the whole record. That is quite true; but where would they have been but for those who supported them, held up their arms, made up their following and their companionship? If they are pinnacles, the pinnacle only expresses the solidity and massiveness of the building that is below. You see the pinnacle from afar; but that pinnacle does not exist in itself, by itself, for itself; it is the upgathering of the great thought, and represents to the farthest-off places the sublime fact that the tabernacle of God is with men upon the earth. To be in the record at all is my ambition; to be on the first page or on the last, to be anywhere in it, that is the beginning of heaven. This is a representation of the Church of all time. You have your great names and your lesser names; you have Peter and James and John and Paul, and you have Philip and Thomas and James and Simon and Judas. To be in the list is enough. No man can write his own name in the list. Sometimes it is absolutely essential that a man should make his own signature, do it with his own finger, either in letters or by mark; his own living hand of flesh must have touched the page. In other records we are written down by consent. We are thankful for the honour of the registration; we have been invited to form a part of the commonwealth, and we have assented to the proposition. No man can write his name in the Lamb's book of life. Every man must open the door of his heart to admit the knocking Saviour as his Guest. God works; man works. There is a marvellous commerce between the Divine and the human, the human and the Divine; the result of that commerce, being happily consummated, is sonship, is liberty, is heaven!

We cannot look at the book as a whole without being struck with its candour. Nothing is kept back; there is no desire to make men appear better than they really were; all the sin is here, all the shame, all the virtue, all the honour—everything is set down with an impartial and fearless hand. That is one of the strongest incidental proofs of the inspiration of the whole book. This is not a series of artificial curves or carvings; the men we have had to deal with are men of flesh and blood like ourselves wholly; about their humanity we can have no doubt. Here is a record of selfishness: the story of Ananias and Sapphira is not kept back. "How much better," some would have said, "to omit it." As well omit the story of Adam and Eve. In every book there is an Adam and Eve, if it be a faithful portraiture of human life; in every soul there is an Adam and Eve, a fall, an expulsion, a day of cherubic fire that asserts the sovereignty of outraged righteousness. These are not inventions, but they are representations of ourselves as we know ourselves, and therefore we can confirm the book. The accident varies, the substance is constant; the mere outside of color changes in every instance, but the heart is bad with selfishness throughout. Dissensions are reported: Paul and Barnabas separated; Paul withstood Peter "to the face, because he was to be blamed." Peter to be blamed! That was an honest book! There is no man-painting here; there is no touch of merely exhibitional genius; there is no attempt to get up. a Christian exhibition in the Acts of the Apostles with the motto, "Behold the perfect men!" There is a stern reality about this that compels the attention which it charms. Christianity is not represented here as to its earthly lot in any very attractive way. Who would say, after reading the Acts of the Apostles, were we to judge by the fate of its apostles and teachers, "Let us also be Christians"? There was not a noble man in the fraternity; there was hardly a man in the whole brotherhood that could trace his ancestry beyond yesterday. If you wanted to join an unfashionable sect, the Christian sect would have presented to you innumerable and overwhelming advantages; if you wanted to suffer, Christianity would find the opportunity. It is a record of suffering, misrepresentation, persecution, terrible sorrow and agony; a record of cold and hunger and thirst and nakedness and night-travelling. The men of the Acts of the Apostles wandered about in deserts and in mountains, in dens and in caves of the earth; they had no festival, no banner, no music, no honour amongst men. We thought that towards the last surely we should hear some better account of it; but in the last chapter Christianity is represented as the sect which is everywhere "spoken against." All of these circumstances and instances illustrate the candour, the intense honesty and reality of the record. Human authors study probabilities. It is a canon amongst literary men that even in a romance nothing shall be put down—though it may actually have occurred—which exceeds the bounds of average probability. The circumstance you narrate you may have seen, but you are not allowed by literary criticism to put down anything that is merely phenomenal—so extraordinary as probably not to occur more than once in a thousand years. You must keep to probability if you would build according to technical rules. There is no study of parts, proportions, colours in the Acts of the Apostles; there is no poetry-making, no romance elaboration; things are put down every night as they occurred every day—there stands the record, with all blotches, blemishes, faults, all heroisms and nobilities, all endurances and glorious successes; nothing is extenuated; the whole tale is told exactly and literally as it occurred.

Reading the Acts of the Apostles through from beginning to end at one sitting—which is the only right way of reading any book in order to get into the swing of its thought and the music of its rhythm—reading the Acts of the Apostles straight through from the first verse to the last, I feel as if I had been present in a great and busy seed-time. I have come home, as it were, from a great field that has just been sown all over—sown with truth seeds, sown with buried men, sown with buried deeds. The seed thus sown does not look very beautiful. Tomorrow it will look like a desert, and for a week or a month there may be no change, but in a week or a month more there will be first the blade; by-and-by, the ear; by-and-by, the full corn in the ear; by-and-by, the flashing sickle in the hand of the angel; by-and-by, the harvest home; by-and-by, Christ's contentment—the satisfaction of his soul.

This is the way to judge a book—namely: to judge it in its wholeness; and this is the way to judge of any Church, or of any institution, or of any man. I must not take your individual actions and attempt to find the whole character in any one conversation, or in any one little sentence; I must not take you at unawares, and when I see you in high temper say, "See how bad he is!" I must not find you in some act of apparent meanness and judge the whole character by it, saying, "See the man's dishonourableness!" I must not find you in some solitary fault, or under the pressure of some tremendous temptation, and say, "See in that instance the whole man!" Society judges so. Harsh judgments are founded upon little detached instances of temper or of spirit; but when he comes who made us—made us so marvellously, made no two of us alike—when he comes who knows our ancestry, our birth, our physical constitution, our advantages and disadvantages, our trials and our sorrows; when he comes who knows us altogether, he will judge us in the totality of our life, and mayhap the worst of us may be recognised by the redeeming Son of God as having upon him the sprinkled blood which will save the life from the destroying stroke.