Acts 21:27-40 And when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews which were of Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the people… This was, to all intents and purposes, a council; of course, not exactly what we call a council in our day, because there were no such churches then as we have now, in practice, or in organisation even. This was, however, a body composed of the authoritative men among the Christian people of Jerusalem. The elders were all gathered together. And it will amuse you to hear what the reason was. Paul was on trial for want of orthodoxy! Dr. Dwight, whom we now bow the knee to, was very much suspected, during his lifetime, of want of orthodoxy; Jonathan Edwards, whom all our theologians swear by, in his day suffered a great deal of disrepute for want of orthodoxy; every man, all the way up, who has laid the Church under obligation — Calvin, Luther, Melancthon, Zwinglius, and others — have suffered in their day as being disturbers, unsettling the belief of men. Christianity was not a new religion that came drifting against the wind, as one might say, right up to a battle with Judaism. It was not a new revelation that gradually came up to quench the old one, and take its place; as in growth, the lower stem shoots out another, which surpasses it in organisation; and gradually out of that shoots another, until we come to the blossoming top, and from that to the fruit. Now, if you reflect, you will perceive that where such a state of facts takes place, there will be a great many things in the form of antecedent beliefs and institutions, which will be only relatively important, and that the weak will stick to everything, that the unreasoning will hold on to everything which has existed in the past, simply because it has been useful; but that there will be other intelligent ones who see that the new includes the old, and a good deal besides. And all such persons, while they will tolerate the old, will accept the new. They will say, "The old was right, but it was relative. It is not superseded: it is fulfilled, and is carried, in another form, higher." The blossoming of a stem does not destroy the plant, but fulfils it. Jesus Christ did not come to destroy the law, as He Himself said, but to fulfil it, to give it a spiritual form, a full, final growth — a free, glorious development. And when that time comes in which men are beginning go take their first steps away from the old and fixed, and towards the new, the free, and the large, there must of necessity be great division, great diversity. And here is the place where the old and new schools always set in. The old school wants to hold the old things as they were; the new school wants to hold the old things, and wants to hold them just as they ought to be. On the one hand there are influences at work which tend to drive the old school into a kind of superstitious adhesion — into a conservatism which has in it no growth and no respectability. On the other hand, the tendencies are to drive the new school entirely away from the old school into something different — something that shall not resemble it. But in point of fact, the old is the father of the new, and the new should always have filial relations to the old. Conservatism is the stalk out of which the progressive rises; and the progressive should always have a good stem under it to stand on when the wind blows, and its limber branches wave therein: Paul, standing before this council, was obliged to defend himself against the Jewish prejudices, for not believing in Moses; for not believing in the Mosaic customs; for teaching a new doctrine. It was an absolute departure from the religion of the Jews. Now, he had not wholly abandoned the system of his fathers. He believed in it enough to use it when circumstances required it; but he was set free from it in its absolute form. There are two kinds of scepticism; one is measured by the mathematical sign of "minus," that doubts and disbelieves, and go back, and back; and the other is designated by the mathematical sign of "plus," which disbelieves in old forms, because they are not large enough; because they are not fruitful enough. The scepticism "minus" is deteriorating; but the scepticism "plus" is ennobling. If there is to be change and growth, there must be in every generation times when men shall doubt the past in order to build larger. So Paul stood before this council, suspected of irregularity because he insisted on adapting his labour, not according to the old Jewish forms, but according to the exigencies of the work he found to do, in the providence of God, in the field s where he went to preach the gospel. (H. W. Beecher.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when the seven days were almost ended, the Jews which were of Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the people, and laid hands on him, |
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