Acts 8:26-40

Chapter 24

Prayer

ALMIGHTY God, how great is thy truth! We cannot understand it all, but in Jesus Christ, Thy Son, we see what we can lay hold of with our mind and with our heart. Thou art revealed in thy Son, who is the brightness of thy glory. We would, therefore, sit at his feet every day, and listen with the attention of our love to all the music of his sacred voice. Give us the hearing ear, and the understanding heart, and may nothing of all the Gospel escape our reverent attention. We need it all. We need thy Son in his body, soul, and spirit. Yea, verily, we need, because of our sinfulness, the blood of his very heart. We would behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world; with our love would we behold him; with our inmost desire would we lay hold of him; with all the pain of our sin would we cry unto him, that he may be our Deliverer, our one Redeemer. We rejoice in the Cross of Christ. It means to us the whole affection of God. We see in that Cross all thy love, thou Ever-loving One. Nowhere else do we see that love in all its infinite tenderness. At the Cross we tarry; by the Cross will we be found when the sun ariseth; and at the setting of the sun we will still be there. In the Cross is pardon; in the Cross is peace. God forbid that we should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We put ourselves into thy keeping; we know not what is best for us, nor do we know which way to take when the ways are many and mostly distasteful. Save us from judging by appearances. Teach us our ignorance. May we begin at the point of self-distrust, and gradually move onward by the guidance of the Holy Ghost to perfect faith in the Son of God. We would live the faith-life: we would live, and move, and have our being in the Spirit. We would be no longer content with the earth, but would despise it, with an infinite scorn, as a final resting point. We accept it as a beginning a school, an opening into the eternal future. Help us to use it as such; enable us to use the world as not abusing it, and to sit so lightly to all its attractions, that at thy bidding we may rise with a good heart, and a glad hope, to go whithersoever thou dost lead. Our life is thine. It is not ours. Our head and our heart are enlightened and warmed by thy glory and by thy love.

Take care of us every one, we are so foolish, and so easily led away from the light and the beauty of thy holiness. Never forsake us; take hold of both our hands, and surround us with fire that cannot be broken through. Thou knowest all the circle of our life. The old pilgrims, who have but a mile or two at the most still to go until they reach the end their lives are behind them, they cannot do any mighty works because of the feebleness of age, and the brevity of time. The Lord comfort such; the Lord himself send tender Gospels to hearts long-tired and greatly enriched with Christian experience. Remember, too, the little ones, for they are all thine. Baptize them with the dew of the morning, and baptize them with the fire of noontide; when they come towards the evening of life may their recollection be turned into a prophecy of still brighter revelation. Be kind unto the sick, the weary, the long-ailing, whose days are nights, and whose nights are a burden of darkness. The Lord himself give patience to those who watch, and hope to those who suffer.

We commend the whole world to thee. It is but a little one, a mere speck in thy firmament, but what tragedies has it not seen! Thou dost in little spaces reveal thine own infinitude. This is the miracle of God; this is the wonder of life; this is the revelation of light. Save the world in every land and every place, and by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost work upon the nations until they shall all bow down before the uplifted Cross, and cry unto thy Son for the baptism of all-cleansing blood. Amen.

Act 8:26-40

26. And the angel of the Lord spake unto Philip, saying, Arise, and go toward the south unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem unto Gaza [one of the five chief cities of the Philistines], which is desert.

27. And he arose and went: and, behold, a man of Ethiopia [now called Nubia and Abyssinia], an eunuch of great authority under Candace [the usual name of Ethiopian queens] queen of the Ethiopians, who had the charge of all her treasure, and had come to Jerusalem for to worship [as proselytes did as well as Jews].

28. Was returning, and sitting in his chariot read Esaias the prophet. [Probably a copy of the Greek translation.]

29. Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to his chariot [doubtless followed by a numerous retinue].

30. And Philip ran thither to him, and heard him read the prophet Esaias, and said, Understandest thou what thou readest?

31. And he said, How can I, except some man should guide me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

32. The place of the Scripture which he read was this, he was led as a sheep to the slaughter: and like a lamb dumb before his shearers, so opened he not his mouth.

33. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth.

34. And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?

35. Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same Scripture, and preached unto him Jesus,

36. And as they went on their way, they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?

37. And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. [The whole of this verse is omitted in the oldest MSS.]

38. And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.

39 And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip [ 1Ki 18:12 ], that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.

40. But Philip was found at Azotus [Asdod, another of the five cities]: and passing through he preached in all the cities till he came to Cæsarea [the chief city in Palestine under the Roman rule].

The Ethiopian Convert. A Typical Man

HOW did Philip know what the Ethiopian traveller was reading? If we saw a chariot passing along our street, and a man engaged in reading a book, we could not by any possibility know what he was reading or what was his condition of mind. How then did Philip know? Here we are reminded that it was the habit of the Jews, and of other Eastern people, not only to read, but to read aloud, and accompany their reading oftentimes by vehement gesticulation. There is no difficulty therefore about this matter of Philip knowing what the Ethiopian eunuch was reading. The great Jewish teachers insisted in many instances upon their scholars reading aloud: they would say, in effect, "If you wish this word to abide in you, you must speak it aloud." And in the Proverbs we have a sentiment to the effect that the words of truth give life to them that utter them forth. We know something about this experience in our own life. Some men could never commit anything to memory if they could not speak the lesson aloud. It is more easy for some minds to learn by the ear than by the eye; their minds require both the eye and the ear to cooperate in the act of memory. I speak to the experience probably of many when I say that utterance aloud is often a very powerful aid to mental retentiveness.

Let us look upon this Ethiopian as a typical man. This is not an instance so many hundreds of years old: it falls easily within our accustomed method of viewing Biblical history. The Ethiopian still lives amongst us. We have not overpassed him on the earth. He is yet in his chariot, he is yet reading ancient Scripture, and he is yet waiting for the one man that can lead him onward from morning twilight to noontide glory. Let us look at this man as an enquirer. He was in a bewildered state of mind. I do not visit with rebuke the bewilderment of honest enquiry. In the realm of spiritual revelation things are not superficial, easy of arrangement, and trifling in issue. Who can wonder that a man in reading the Old Testament should feel like a traveller making his uneasy way through a land of cloud and shadow? Do not be distressed because you are puzzled and bewildered by religious mystery. The most advanced minds in the Church have had to pass through precisely your experience. But the path of the just shineth more and more unto the perfect day. Do not make idols of your perplexities. Do not make a boast of your bewilderment. You know that there is a subtle temptation in that direction to talk about your doubts and difficulties in a tone which suggests that yours is so critical and so judicial a mind that it is not to be put off with the easy solutions that have satisfied intellects of an inferior order. Be honest in your bewilderment, and be simple and true-hearted. The eunuch was not only bewildered: he was teachable. He said, "I wonder what this means; would that some man could join me in this study and throw light upon this mystery; I feel lonely; the voice of a teacher would now gladden me; I would that God would send some director to show me the meaning of this and lead me into the light." Teachableness is one of the first characteristics of honesty. There is no religious honesty that is not adorned by the spirit of docility. If you are self-trustful, if you walk by your own lights, if you contend, even silently and passively, that it lies within the compass of your power to find out everything for yourself, then you are not a scholar in the school of Christ; you are stubborn, you are dogmatical, and, as such, you deprive yourself of all the gifts of Providence. Yet how few people are teachable! So many of us go to the Bible and find proofs of what we already believe. Is this not solemnly true? Whatever your form of Church government is, you go to the Bible and find a text to vindicate it. Whatever your particular theology is, you open the Scripture with the express purpose of finding in it a proof that you are right. This is not the spirit of Christ. The true believer goes with an unprejudiced mind, truly humble, honestly desirous of knowing what is true. No matter who lives or dies, who goes up or goes down, what is truth must be, and ever is, the supreme enquiry of honest and teachable spirits. The danger is that we become mere traditionalists. This was the great blemish in Jewish education. Men believed what was handed on to them from one generation to another, without personal enquiry into the foundations and roots of the doctrines they were required to accept. Do not call such acceptance by the noble name of faith. You who accept doctrines in that fashion are not students, or scholars, or enquirers: you are merely passive and indifferent custodians, uttering words which have in them no rays of life, and no pith of pathos and reality. Would that we could all come to the Bible afresh, divesting the mind of everything we ever heard, and reading the Scriptures through from end to end, turning over every page with the breath of this prayer "Spirit Divine, show me what is truth." We might lose a good deal of our present possession, but we should be enlarged with other and better treasures. Every man would then have the Bible dwelling richly in him, not as a series of separate and isolated texts, but as a spirit, a genius, a revelation, a guardian angel.

Being bewildered and yet teachable, there can be no surprise that as an enquirer the ennuch was, in the third place, obedient. The Gospel does not ask us to set up our little notions against its revelation. A revelation cannot afford to be argumentative upon common terms. Any Gospel that comes to me with a quiver in its voice, with a hesitancy or a reserve in its tone, vitiates its own credentials, and steps down from the pedestal of commanding authority. The eunuch, having heard the sermon preached to him by Philip, obeyed. "Here is water, what hindereth me to be baptized?" He would have the whole thing completed at once. So many persons are afraid that they are not fit , or they are not prepared. They have heard the Gospel a quarter of a century or more, but still they are wondering about themselves. Such people are not humble, they are dishonest; they are trifling with themselves and with others; they have not reached the point of teachableness, but are still lingering with selfish delight in the land of bewilderment. What hindereth him? No man should hinder you from coming to Christ. I fear sometimes that the function of the modern Church is to get up hindrances, to make fences, and boundaries, and lines, over which men have to step, and hills over which they have to climb. These are men-made hindrances. In the Gospel I find but one word for all honest, teachable men, and that one word is Welcome! Hindrances are man's inventions. As to the form of baptism, please yourself. It is not a matter of form; it is a matter of meaning and spirit. Some believe in adult baptism, others believe in what is termed believers baptism; and I believe in LIFE-baptism. So that wherever I find human life in this blood-redeemed world, I would baptize it in the Triune Name. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Baptism is greater than any form of baptism.

For a moment or two, regard this treasurer of the Ethiopians not only as an enquirer, but as a hearer, and then note his personal characteristics. First of all, as a hearer, he was prepared; he was already seriously perusing the mysterious volume. He had not to be called from afar. Already he was in the sanctuary. Where are prepared hearers nowadays? Where are those who come to Church from the Bible itself; full of the prophets, their steps to the sanctuary beating time to the noble music of the Psalms? What is the work of Philip nowadays? It is to persuade, to plead, to break through iron-bound attention and fix it upon spiritual realities. Philip has now to deal with men who are reading the journals of the day, the fiction of the hour, and the exciting discussions of the passing time, and from any one of these engagements to the Scriptures of God there may lie unnumbered thousands of miles! So we get so little in the Church. We do not lift up our heads from the prophetic page and turn a glowing face and an eager eye upon the Philip whom God has sent to teach us. Our ear is full of the hum of the world. Our mind is dazed by many cross lights; our attention is teazed by a thousand appellants. Could we have prepared hearers, as well as prepared preachers, then in five minutes a man might preach five hours, because every word would be a revelation, and every tone a call to higher life. A prepared pulpit fights against infinite odds when it has to deal with an unprepared pew.

Not only was the Ethiopian a prepared hearer, he was a responsive one. He answered Philip. His eye listened, his attitude listened, his breath listened. His head, his heart, his will, all listened. Who can now listen? To hear is a divine accomplishment. Who hears well? To have a responsive hearer is to make a good preacher. The pew makes the pulpit. It is possible to waste supreme thought and utterance upon an indifferent hearer. But let the hearer answer, and how high the dialogue, how noble the exchange of thought, how possibly grand the issues of such high converse! Do not suppose that a man is not answering his teacher simply because he is not audibly speaking to him. There is a responsive attitude, there is an answering silence, there is an applauding quietude, there is a look, which is better than thunders of applause! Let us study the eunuch's conduct in this matter, and endeavour to reproduce it. He was prepared, he was responsive; what wonder if in the long run he became a new creature? He helped Philip; he preached by listening.

We might pass on now from looking at the eunuch as an enquirer, and as a hearer, to regard him for a moment as a convert. As a convert he was an enlightened one. He had passed from the prophetic to the evangelic, he had seen the Cross, he knew on whom he had believed, and he pronounced his name with sublimest emphasis. "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." Then Philip must have been preaching this doctrine. You know the sermon by the hearer. Say ye, "It was a beautiful sermon, an exquisite piece of reasoning, a model of persuasiveness?" When you blaspheme after hearing it, and serve the devil with double industry after having passed an hour in God's house, that is wrong, that is lying! Show the solidity, the Scripturalness, the power, the practical tendencies of the discourse by living it! Being an enlightened convert, the eunuch was a convert deeply convinced in his own mind. There are hereditary Christians, nominal Christians, halting Christians, merely assenting, and non-enquiring Christians. "And they because they have not much deepness of earth soon wither away." There are also convinced Christians, men who have fought battles in darkness and have dragged the prey to the mountains of light. They are those who have undergone all the pain, the happy pain, the joyous agony, of seeking for truth in difficult places, and, proving it, have embraced it at the altar as if they had wedded the bride of their souls. These will make martyrs if need be. These are the pillars of the Church; men not tossed to and fro, but abiding in a noble steadfastness. In the use of this incident there is another point connected with the eunuch's experience as a convert which we must not overlook, he was enlightened, he was convinced, and in the third place he was exultant. "He went on his way rejoicing." You have not seen Christ if you are not filled with joy. You have seen him in a cloud; you have seen a painted mask that professes to represent him; you have seen some ghastly travesty of the beauty of Christ. Had you seen God's Son, the Saviour of the world, every dreary note would have been taken out of your voice; you would have forgotten the threnody of your old winter, and have begun to sing with the birds of summer. See the eunuch, oblivious even of Philip's presence. He does not know probably that Philip was gone. He was lifted up in sublime ecstasy and divine enthusiasm. He saw divine things, new heavens, a new earth, bluer skies, greener lands, than he had ever seen before, and in that transfiguration he saw Jesus only. Philip, miraculously sent, was miraculously withdrawn, but there sat in the chariot now "one like unto the Son of Man." It is thus that intermediate preachers prepare the way for the incoming of their Master. And so preacher after preacher says, as he sees the radiant vision coming " He must increase, but I must decrease."