Acts 18:9-11 - Homilies By P.c. Barker

The complement to human uncertainty found in Divine fidelity.

It must be supposed either that the omniscient eye saw some signs of failing in Paul, or else that the greatness of the work and the severity of the trials before him were judged by Divine compassion to ask some special help. Notice, therefore, how true it is that—

I. THE BEST AND STRONGEST OF HUMAN DEVOTION IS LIABLE TO SOME UNCERTAINTY . No reference is here made to the fickleness that owns to no real devotion, nor ever sprang from depth of root. We are to note that the longest human perseverance may yet break, the stoutest human heart may have its weaker moments, during which irretrievable damage may be done to its cause and discredit to itself, and the warmest devotion may under certain circumstances cool.

1. Exceeding weariness of the flesh may overcome, some unexpected hour, the truest human devotion, if it get left as it were just a moment to itself.

2. An exceedingly baffled state of the mind and of faith may throw that determined human devotion. The vicissitude of the world, the Divine conduct of its history, and, not the least, the Divine conduct of the grand forces of Christianity, when they seem awhile to halt or to be mocked by their own professed friends into discredit,—these often offer to baffle each deepest thinker, each most observant reflector.

3. The exceeding keenness of the soul's own peculiar disappoint-mort, when the beauty and the persuasiveness and the unchallengeable merit of Christ do nevertheless count, to all present appearance, for nothing before the brute force of the powers of evil,—this threatens the patience of human devotion.

II. THE UNFAILING SUCCOUR OF DIVINE INTERPOSITION . That interposition rests on three very thoughts of mercy. They are:

1. The Divine observingness of "all and each," and of the most secret heart and need of each.

2. The Divine sympathy. This is one of the great ultimate facts of a risen, ascended, glorified Savior, who had been once with us, and who still shares, high aloft as he, is our nature.

3. The Divine practical methods of rescue in the hour of danger a provision against its over-storming rage. Among such methods may be ranked: