Acts 8:14-25

Chapter 22

Prayer

Almighty God, though we have multiplied words against thee, yet hast thou made a flock of us, and thou art thyself our Shepherd. Jesus Christ thy Son is the Good Shepherd who gave, and ever gives, his life for the sheep. We were lost once, but we have returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. Once we were in the wilderness and could find no pasture, nor home, no sweet security, but now we are enfolded upon the high mountains of Israel, and daily dost thou feed us and lead us forth. When the sun is hot at noon, thou dost cause us to lie down in the cool shade. Thou leadest us beside the still waters, so that we may drink, without trouble or fear, of the living stream. And into rich pastures dost thou lead us, that we may not know the pain of hunger. What shall we say unto thee? There are no fit words for the utterance of our heart's great love. Thou hast gone beyond all words, and left them behind, unable to touch the majesty of thy tenderness and the glory of thy power.

Thou wilt still permit us to speak what we feel. In Christ thou hast made us new creatures. We would praise thee and magnify thee, and hallow thy name, because of this thy new creation. Through thy Son, our Saviour, we have received the Holy Ghost, the wondrous Spirit, the Paraclete, the Abiding Comforter, the Leader into all truth! May we not fear as we enter in. As the firmament of thy truth heightens above our heads, may we behold with astonishment and joy this display of thy spiritual riches; and as the horizon, which we thought the limit, goes away in ever-widening circles, may we know that thy truth is greater than our imaginings, and thy creation infinitely more than our thought. Save us from all uncharitableness. Deliver us from the prison of littleness, and bigotry, and supposed finality. By thy Spirit show us that the riches of Christ are unsearchable, without beginning, without ending, without measure, infinite riches of light and wisdom, of grace, and truth. Feed us with thy word. We have forgotten most of it; have mercy upon us! We ought to have hoarded it, and guarded it with our whole strength from worldly encroachment and corruption, yet have we forgotten it! We have allowed the noises of the world to interrupt the music of heaven. God be merciful unto us in Christ the Atoning Saviour, because of this our great transgression.

Now come to us, as we need thee most. Some of us have brought summer flowers to offer thee. Flowers of joy, and praise, and new delight, and recovered hope. Lord, take them every one in thy hand, and they will never wither. Others have come with pained heads, and heavy hearts, and darkened eyes. The light of hope has been blown out. The staff of dependence has broken in the hand that leaned upon it. The fair-looking garden was but a pit covered with flowers. The Lord cheer such with wine from heaven, and with bread which is angels' food. Others know not why they are here. Some of them little children brought by other hands. Some who do not know what the house is, or the day. Lord, cause a new light to enter the mind of such, and make them glad. The Lord speak a word in season to him that is weary. The Lord show the strongest man that his strength is but the boast of a moment, and show the weakest one that his weakness may be made the beginning of eternal strength. Dry our tears when they flow like a river; and when our joy would lead us away from the trust that is the strength and the glory of life, the Lord dash it with bitterness that we may be made to think and pray.

And now shall this day be thine, thou King of saints, thou leader of battles, thou man of war? The morning is upon us now, and the night will soon be here, and we would that thy banner might float over a conquered field. Ride forth in thy strength, thou whose chariots are twenty thousand, and thousands of thousands. Make thy ministers a flame of fire, and thy house a doorway into heaven, and let thy Gospel be heard in all its ineffable sweetness; and may all rivals flee away before the advancing light of thy glory, and leave thee King of kings and Lord of lords, the only Potentate! Amen.

Act 8:14-25

14. Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God [the whole sum and substance of the Gospel] they sent unto them Peter and John:

15. Who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost [not regeneration only, but the Pentecostal gift]:

16. (For as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.)

17. Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost.

18. And when Simon saw [so visible and conspicuous was the change] that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money [ χρημάτα riches],

19. Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost.

20. But Peter said unto him, thy money perish with thee [be together with thee for perdition], because thou hast thought [the Greek verb has a transitive not a passive sense] that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

21. Thou hast neither part nor lot [ Col 1:12 ] in this matter: for thy heart is not right [ 2Pe 2:15 ] in the sight of God.

22. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps [implying a latent doubt] the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee [Peter himself neither condemns nor forgives].

23. For I perceive that thou art in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity.

24. Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me.

25. And they, when they had testified and preached the word of the Lord [implying a stay of some duration], returned to Jerusalem, and preached the gospel [announced the glad tidings] in many villages of the Samaritans.

The Deputation to Samaria

"WHEN the Apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John." This must have been a most instructive experience to the Apostle John. There was a time when that Apostle did not conceal his feelings respecting a village in Samaria. Jesus Christ wished to enter into a village of the Samaritans and to remain there a little while. The villagers did not understand this desire; they saw that his face was hardened in the direction of Jerusalem, and because he looked so steadfastly towards that city they did not receive him; and when James and John saw this they said, "Lord, wilt Thou not command fire to come down from heaven and consume them even as Elias did?" John could not brook the insult, he did not know what spirit he was of. Little by little Jesus Christ brings us to understand his purpose, and to enter into the meaning of his life; and then the John who would have prayed for destructive fire is himself sent down to Samaria to invoke the falling of another flame that burns but does not consume! We cannot tell what we may yet do in life. Amongst our old enmities we may yet find our sweetest friendships. Do not seek to destroy any man, however much he may reject you or misunderstand you. A time may come when you can render him the service of prayer. The text is now easy reading, but there was a day when it was a grand story. "When the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the Word of God " that is nothing to us; we read it as if it were a commonplace. In reality it is the dawning of a new day, the winning of a great battle, the opening of a beneficent revelation; that day the Gentiles were admitted into the Kingdom of Christ, openly and by a glad celebration. We lose so much by forgetting the circumstances of the case which is before us. This is a verse now read as if it had no atmosphere. What is it that we lose in history? It is the atmosphere that we lose. And what is it that gives the novelist or the dramatist supremacy over the historian, or the dry, technical, and most learned annalist? It is that he creates, or recalls, the atmosphere, and thus his fictions become the real facts. We are now, let us suppose, standing upon a great stretch of land, and between us and another stretch of country quite as large there rolls a broad, deep river. We cannot cross it at this point. We travel by its edge mile by mile until we come to a great stone bridge, and it is over that bridge that the commerce between the two countries is continually maintained. That bridge we find in the fourteenth verse of this chapter. The bridge was built at Samaria, between old Judaism and despised Gentilism, by which these noble Christian prophets and apostles went from one side to the other, and thus Jerusalem became in the apostles' eyes as the mother city of the world, when they heard that the Gentiles had so received the music of the redeeming Word. We do not care for this miracle now. The dreariest part of every missionary meeting to many persons in the excited assembly is the reading of the report a reading which should bring all the Church together in its noblest enthusiasm; a reading under which strong men should stand and never stir till the last syllable had throbbed upon the hot air then there should arise a shout as of a conquering host "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow." Such is not our way now. Miracles have become commonplaces, and reports have succumbed to the rhetoric that never suffered.

When this report was made in Jerusalem, the apostles sent down Peter and John. Was Peter then really "sent down?" So it would certainly appear from the text. We thought that Peter would have sent down other men! It is evident, however, that that thought is misconceived. Peter himself was a messenger. Yet how delicate the tribute to his undoubted primacy of love and enthusiasm! He it was who was selected to go down. His name appears first, and yet he was but a deputation! There is nothing papal here. The Pope is not "sent down," he sends down. Peter and John were sent down into Samaria to make inquiry and to do whatever might appear needful under the novel circumstances. Our greatest men should always be sent down to the villages under circumstances such as these related in the text. Our very grandest preachers ought to be our missionaries. A missionary is now, unhappily, a despised man. If I wanted to empty this church I have only to announce that a "returned missionary" would preach here. What a desolation he would make in the earth! The man who has suffered, who has not counted his life dear to him that he might preach Christ, would be left to tell his story to vacant air! He might not tell it in dainty language, in choice music of eloquence; he might have no deftness of speech, no cunning skill in the stringing of sentences, and in the utterance of expressive accents; he might have no genius of emphasis; but he has come to tell of battles being won, and if we were in Christ, as very parts of his soul, we would not mind the manner of the narrative; we would be as soldiers whose noblest pride was touched to hear that the Master's banner floated over all the earth in sign of beneficent victory!

When Peter and John were come down to Samaria what did they do? This will reveal the right aspect of apostolic influence and office. Let us read the text in a way of our own, and then it will stand in some such fashion as this, "Peter and John, when they were come down, sat upon a great and high throne, and waved over the astounded Gentiles a staff that was supposed to have singular power in it, and the amazed and wonder-struck villagers of Samaria fell back before such dazzling dignity and bewailed their own unworthiness." That would be poor Scripture! That would be Scripture without inspiration from heaven. How does the text really read? It reads in this way: When they were come down, they PRAYED for the villagers, that they might receive the Holy Ghost. Pray for your friends; do not affright them. Pray for inquirers; do not overpower them. Pray in great religious crises, and thus magnify the event, and do not lessen it. Say, this is an affair which must be lifted up into the light of God's countenance, and God himself must order and rule in such an instance. Do we PRAY now? The question is not, do we use the terms of prayer, or fall into the attitude of supplication, but do we PRAY? Do we ask as if we meant to have what we ask? The question is too solemn to be answered by any one man in the name of others. For what did the Apostles pray? That Samaria might receive the Holy Ghost. Then what had Samaria already received? Samaria had only received the first baptism. Water will do you no good. It was meant to be a beginning, not an end. Whether you have received drops of water, drops of dew, upon your infantile brow, or whether you have been plunged of men in the deep river, it matters not, if you have not gone further. We have believed, but have we received the Holy Ghost? As a matter of fact, we have not, in many instances as we well know. People seem to imagine that when they have believed, the work is done. As well tell me that when you have put the fuel into the grate the fire is lighted. We have believed, the fuel has been received into our mind, we know the truth, what we want is the burning spark! Now, have we received the Holy Ghost? There is no mistaking it. We have had occasion already to say that no man can mistake fire. You may paint it, but you cannot warm your hands at the flame on the canvas. Fire is like nothing but itself. It separates man from man, yet unites man to man. It burns up selfishness. It purifies, it glorifies. It is the secret of the universe. They who truly worship fire are not far from the kingdom of God. What is that there is not in fire? It is even so with the Holy Ghost. It gives a man individuality. It detaches him from the common crowd and gives him a singularity of his own. What if it be true that we do not know what is meant by the words, the HOLY GHOST? We are reasoners, debaters, metaphysicians, theologians, essayists, learned men all these we may be with the water still upon our faces! When the Church has received the Holy Ghost, the Church will be unlike every other community. When the pulpit has been baptized by the Holy Ghost, it will stand alone in the supremacy of its power. At present it is not a Sinai, it is a reading-desk. It is the retreat of the mumbler, it is the living of the essayist. The pulpit should be but a pedestal from which a man cries with the shout of thunder, and with the energy of the refreshing and purifying breath of heaven. Lord baptize us with the Holy Ghost! Our religion is at present an argument; our desire is that it may become a PASSION!

Simon the Sorcerer, hearing that through laying on of the Apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was received, offered them money. It is easy to abuse this man known as Simon, but he acted a most natural and rational part. Consider his training, his surroundings, his particular avocation, and the great influence he had acquired, and then say if he did not take the very course open to a keen and penetrating observer. He had lived all his life in the market-place. He had always been behind the counter; he had never breathed a purer air; he knew but one world, and one language. When, therefore, he saw by laying on of the Apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered the Apostles money, saying, "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive the Holy Ghost." Simon saw only the outside which of us sees any further? We ourselves think because we have been to church we have been good, or that because we have bowed at the name of Jesus, or sung a Christian hymn, or heard a Christian discourse, that therefore we are Christians. That is precisely the reasoning of Simon. There has grown up in some sections of the Christian Church a custom which is known as Simony. The meaning is that this or that particular spiritual function has been turned into a marketable commodity. The custom derived its name from the name of the Sorcerer, and from the circumstance recorded in this text. He who would buy a pulpit is guilty of what is called simony. He who would hold his place in this Church or any other by virtue of having bought it is guilty of simony. But the simony of the Christian Church is not in the pulpit alone. We may buy or try to buy influence, status, and authority in the Church by the use of money. Who is there that does not imagine that everything can be bought? Yet how little in reality can we buy with money! Can you buy sound judgment? What is the price of it? Can you buy wisdom? Tell me the value of it in plain money. You can buy diamonds for the finger can you buy lightning for the eyes? You can buy musical instruments can you make your tongue so eloquent as to be a tabernacle of thunder? What can you buy? Can you buy poetic fire? Can you buy perfect insight? Can you buy any form of spiritual and enduring power? Know ye that money has but a little world to operate in, and that the highest gifts are not to be purchased with gold. Seek wisdom, seek knowledge, seek instruction the price of it is above rubies. If we could rightly lay hold of this idea it ought to open great worlds of possibility to us. God hath chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and strong in power. "He doeth as he will among the armies of heaven and amongst the children of men." To the poorest man he says, "Take this Gospel and preach it." A manger will do for a cradle when there is in it the Saviour of the world. Do you suppose that because you have little money you have little power, little life, little responsibility? What have you? You may have the power of prayer! You may be able to put into words at God's throne thoughts that burn in me, but for which I myself have no speech. You may be able to "speak a word in season to him that is wear)." You may have the gift of hope and the faculty of music, and you may be able to lift the load from many a burdened heart. Poorest man, do not despair! You may be rich in ideas, rich in sympathies, rich in suggestion, and rich in all the noblest treasures that can make men wealthy with indestructible possession.

Chapter 23

Prayer

Almighty God, the earth is thine and the fulness thereof. Thine is also the fulness of the sea. Thou lookest upon all things, and in them thou dost behold a purpose all thine own. Thy day of explanation is coming, and then will be the full shining of the light upon all the way which we have taken; and in that hour of thy shining glory we shall truly know how good thou hast been, and how evil has been our life in the light of thy holiness. Thou hast redeemed us with an infinite price. We see what value thou dost place upon our souls by the ransom which thou hast paid for their redemption. We are redeemed not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with precious blood of the Son of God. We are not our own; we are bought with blood; we are purchased with life; thou thyself in thy son didst die that we might live. For these holy thoughts we bless thee. They lift the soul above the things of time, and all the weariness of earth, and bring us into the calmness and peace of thine own quietude. We rejoice in all spiritual impulse, and aspiration, and sacred desire. We would not live in the earth, but would draw our life from the sun. Enable us, therefore, to fix our whole affections upon the Son of God, our one Redeemer and Saviour, and Priest, and in the fixing of that love may we find the only steadfastness and security of our life. Save us from all the weary, and all the exciting processes of self-trust and self-idolatry, and lead us into the infinite rest of faith in thy Fatherhood. We would rest in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We would abide in him as the branch abideth in the vine. We have no life in ourselves. Our life is hidden with God in Christ. Enable us, we humbly pray thee, to know this in all the breadth of its meaning and in all the completeness of its comfort, that we be no more children tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, without a home for the heart, and without a refuge for the wounded spirit. In thy house we expect to see thy light. There is a light above the brightness of the sun. We would walk in that light, feeling all its warmth, and answering with unspotted piety the challenge of its sacred glory. Reveal thyself to us in the sanctuary. Thou hast a beauty which the world doth not and cannot see; the beauty of love, of grace, of tenderness. Thou canst walk with men, and talk in whispers to their listening hearts. Thou canst cause their trouble to arise like dew of the morning, to be fashioned into the bow of new promise and hope in the blue heavens. Thou canst comfort thy children with tenderest solaces. Have pity upon the broken heart, spare the reed that is already bruised, and send a Gospel this day to hearts that are longing for it. As the mother would save the child, as the father would bring back the wanderer, and sink the past in eternal oblivion, wilt thou not much more call us every one to thy love and grace in Christ Jesus, and make for our feet a new earth, and for our eyes a new heaven.

We remember the absent. Those who are travelling upon the land or sea, whose return we are expecting with thankfulness and joy. We cannot forget the sick at home and in the hospital. Everywhere on the wide earth is sickness to be found. We thank thee for all the care that is bestowed upon the sick and dying. We pray that thou thyself wilt be the Physician of those who are in deepest suffering. Send messages of comfort to all homes of sickness, whether private or public, and let the healing power of the Gospel of Christ be felt in every suffering heart.

Thy word is truth, let us hear it as such. May we not listen to it as other than the voice of God's eternity. Touch our ears that they may hear the faintest whisper of thy love; open our understanding that we may understand the Scriptures; and by the ministry of the Holy Ghost, God the Spirit, prepare us to receive the truth with all humbleness and meekness, and teachableness of mind. Dismiss the world from our thought and time from our anxiety, and give us thy tender peace, thou that dwellest in the quietness of Eternity. Amen.

The Deputation to Samaria

( continued )

LET us now see what Simon the Sorcerer did when he saw that through laying on of the Apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given to the people. The expression now reads as a very common one, yet there is hidden under it a very far-reaching and most subtle and potent meaning. Simon offered the Apostle money. There was probably no fixed sum in the mind of Simon. If such a bestowal as that of the Spirit could be effected upon him, money should not stand in the way. The text does not read that Simon asked the price, or that Simon fixed the sum: Simon was a great man in his own line, and a man who had been most successful in business, and therefore he offered money, and not any particular or defined sum of money. This was the hour of Apostolic temptation. They had no money. To the lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, Peter had said, "Silver and gold have I none." Money is always a powerful temptation to the empty pocket. Where is the man in this congregation who can say, No, to every form of temptation which money can assume? "The love of money is the root of all evil." It is very easy for us, when no temptation is troubling the ear, to say what we should do under such and such circumstances; but when the money is actually in the hand of the tempter, and when in one moment more it may be in our own possession, and when the thing asked for in exchange is itself a good thing, where is the man in the Church who can return a denial with the emphasis of thunder, and, so to say, with the accent of lightning? We are not to suppose that Jesus Christ's temptation was confined to Himself. He was tempted symbolically for us as well as really tempted in himself. The way to the Kingdom always lies through the gate of the wilderness. To enter heaven is to win a battle. We do not dream ourselves into heaven. We do not fall asleep as in the darkness of earth, and quietly and joyously open our eyes upon the summer of heaven. The way to the upper places is a way through temptation, suffering, discipline, and disappointment a long way, so crooked, so weary, with hardly a well upon the wayside to rest upon and to drink at. That is the upward and most difficult way! When the Baptist had his great temptation, in a moment of excitement, when he seemed to sum up in himself all prophecy and noble speech of the ancient seers, the people came to him in their most influential classes, and said, "Art THOU He that should come?" Do not read these words as if they contained nothing. They were a temptation of the subtlest kind, addressed not consciously, to vanity, to ambition, and to some of the lower forms of patriotism. The principal seat upon the chariot was then suggestively offered to John the Baptist; he might have mounted, and said, "Yes, come with me; I am your deliverer and prince!" Every man has his own temptations. Temptation is not always explained or always explicable in words. There are battles in secret. There is a Gethsemane in every noble life. Ministers will prove themselves to have been anointed with the true and pure oil of the upper sanctuary when they do not smooth over life as if it were a kind of summer dream, but when they recognize trouble, temptation, and inexplicable weakness, and lead the way by noble sympathy, by the lure of a manly and noble example, and by the power that is in spiritual contagion. The Church is always tempted in this same way, namely, by the offer of money. We must always reject the unholy patronage. Do I address a minister who preaches to the moneyed pew? Your ministry will be blighted with well-merited condemnation. Do I minister to a Church that could accept secular patronage in order to preach a settled and determined theology? Such a Church would have sold its birthright for a contemptible price. Does any power say to the religion of the Nazarene, "I will patronize, and pay thee, and see thy bill discharged all the way through?" Every thorn in that crown of thorns would answer with angry resentment an offer so detestable. Faith must spread its own daily board. Love must pay its own way. If the Church, be it but two or three in number, has not energy enough, love enough, to pay all that requires to be paid, it is not a church, it is a speculative club. Do I speak to some who represent very feeble communities? My friends, your weakness is your strength. Do not ask any man to help you, unless his help be the inspiration of love not a taxation, but the outgoing of a noble spirit of obedience to the crucified and now throned Christ. It is not necessary for you to be rich in order to be a Church. There are, perhaps, only some five or six of you in the little village; what then? As two of the disciples walked together and held converse upon Christian themes, "Jesus Himself drew near." And in this drawing near the Church was formed. Where He is, the Church is. Do not therefore accept any bribe or any challenge, or kneel before any temptation to be rich, and great, and influential. Be you more zealous in prayer, more intense in love and in enthusiasm; in thai line let your victories lie! Never be bribed into silence. Never keep back the truth of God, lest you should forfeit status or income. Again and again have I said, and the conviction grows upon me that the saying is true It is not necessary for any man to LIVE, but it is necessary for every man to be LOYAL to Christ's truth. The lesson comes to us from very ancient times. When the king came to meet Abram, and offered him great hospitality and patronage, Abram said, "No; lest thou say, I have made Abram rich." The chief power is spiritual, not financial. But the Church has wonderfully fallen under the delusiveness of the fallacy which teaches that the Church ought to be socially respectable. It would make the heart cry its hottest tears to read the phrases that are now popular: Such and such a man ministers to a" most respectable congregation." Such and such a congregation "has hardly one poor person in it." Other congregations are notable for the considerable number of " common people" that degrade the pews. To such a plight has the religion of Christ been brought by those who have been offered money and have accepted the unholy bribe!

How was it that the Apostles were enabled to escape the subtle influence of this potent temptation? The answer is given in the narrative. The Apostles had a true conception of the spiritual election and function of the Church. "Thy money," said Peter to the sorcerer, "perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money." The Church had not then become a machine. Ordination was not then a thing to be arranged. It was inspiration. It was the sudden seizing of the mind, and its transformation into spiritual dignity and majesty. We do not understand this now. Men are now "prepared" for the ministry. Now we " educate" men for the pulpit. By all means be educated, be instructed; but educate the man, and the citizen, and let the pulpit alone. You do not educate the poet. You educate the man; and too much education we cannot have; there is no virtue in ignorance; ignorance is always weakness; therefore would I uphold strenuously the education of the citizen, the subject, the man, the individual, but let the pulpit receive the gift of God. We are not to come to this work by arrangement of man. The ministry ought not to be a class, or clique, or sect of its own by any man's arrangements. It should be elect of God. A minister should wear his credentials openly, and they should be so written that none could dispute their authenticity. Educate men for the ministry! "Thy education perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God" could be purchased by schooling. Get all the education you can; be the best informed man of your circle, so far as is possible; encourage intellectual ambition, and satisfy it even to satiety; but inspiration makes a minister! And inspiration makes the Church. In such a sense as we rarely realize is that word true. "Not by might, and not by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord." When the Church learns that lesson, the Church will have no need to cry out for more ministers, for the Church will by such a feeling utter a prevailing prayer to heaven that "labourers maybe thrust into the harvest." Are you, young man, considering whether you will enter Christ's ministry or not? Then pray God you may never enter it; for it is not a question for consideration. There are those, shame on their grey hairs, who are telling us that if the Church would offer more money to the young men of our "better families," they might possibly give themselves to the ministry! A malediction from heaven be upon such thoughts! Does Christ want the members of our "better families" to be kind enough to accept position as his ambassadors, and expositors, and friends? He was always despised and rejected of men. He will choose his own ministers. He will see to it that the pulpit is never silent. It may change its form of utterance, and its attitude towards the whole necessity of civilized life; but Christ will find His own ministers, and inspire them with his own spirit.

Peter spoke in his own characteristic tone when he said to Simon the magician, "Thy money perish with thee, thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter; for thy heart is not right in the sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee." Peter's speech was not a mere denunciation. If you merely denounce men you discourage them. Learn here how to preach! You need nothing more on this part of your mission than this speech to Simon Magus. Nothing is wanted in the emphasis with which Peter speaks; his moral dignity is positively sublime, and yet, having uttered the word of malediction he shows that the true object of the denunciation of wrong is to save the wrong-doer. Here is the gospel in an unexpected place. After such a thunderstorm who could have expected this voice of lute and harp? Re. pent! Forgive! It is weakness merely to abuse, or denounce, or rebuke. Reproach acquires its dignity and its usefulness by the tenderness which eventually flows out of it. Your reproof of the age in which you live will derive nearly all its force from the opening up of the way of possible forgiveness and restoration to those whose wickedness you have denounced. Give up no man. Do not spare his sin; hold the fiercest light over it, but point the wrong-doer himself to the possibility of forgiveness through repentance and supplication. Hear this as a gospel, oh, wrong-doing man! About your wrong doing we cannot have two opinions. Upon the wickedness we would rain fire and brimstone from God out of heaven, but you yourselves REPENT, "if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven."

Simon did not nor could he be expected to do seize the spiritual idea which ruled the Apostle's thinking. His reply is most natural, though often condemned. "Then answered Simon, and said, Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me." He asked for Apostolic prayer, so far he was not wrong. He suggested the Apostolic prayer "that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me." There he failed to see the right meaning of prayer. We must not go to God in supplication merely to escape judgment, or wrath, or penalty, but to escape sin. Yet let a man come through any gate that first opens, only let him COME! We cannot all be metaphysicians in this respect; we cannot all be theologically correct as to our way of approaching our Infinite Father. If one man should come through hatred of sin, through such a high spiritual nature that he feels the evil of sin and wishes to escape it; if another man of lower mould should say, "I fear hell, I fear fire, I fear the worm that dieth not; God have mercy upon me." Let him also come. Every man must pray as he can. You cannot send the heart to school to teach it how to pray. It will pray from the point where the burden presses. How instinctively the child lays its hand upon the place where the pain is! So my prayer to heaven will come out of that wound that bleeds most copiously. Where the pain is, the prayer should be. If the pain is spiritual because of the sinfulness of sin, I will pray some lofty prayer; and if I be troubled with the fear of eternal night, God will not despise even the penitential cry of fear and dread.