Acts 20:30-38

Chapter 80

Prayer

Almighty God, thou takest away the sin of the world by Jesus Christ thy Son, our Saviour. We cannot tell where thou dost take it Thou dost for ever bury it; thou dost plunge it into eternal forgetfulness; thou dost cast it behind thee, and no man evermore can find it. This is the miracle of the Cross; this is the very mystery, and the very glory of grace Divine. Thou dost magnify thy grace against our sin; the light of the one drives away the darkness of the other, so that it cannot be called back again. Thus are we called every day to rejoice in mercy yea, to find in ourselves daily witness to the saving grace of God. We ourselves are heaven's epistles. Our life is not written with pen and ink of man's devising; our life is traced by the Divine finger, shaped by the Divine hands, and inspired by the Divine eternity. We are God's workmanship; we are God's husbandry. We are not the accidents of the time or the occasion; we express the fore-ordination and infinite sovereignty of God. We will look upon ourselves highly; we will rejoice in our princedom. We are not of the earth, earthy, when we are accepted in the Beloved; we are then heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, as having equal share in the infinite light and peace of heaven. So we will not look downward and see the grave; we will look upward and see the immortality. We will think of the radiant heaven, pure angels, sanctified spirits, the one throne, the infinite light, the ineffable purity; and so filling our minds with things Divine, we shall triumph over present pain and aching necessity, and tumultuous trouble, and grim death itself. We are rich in Christ; we have all things and abound yea, all truth, and light, and grace, and comfort, and peace unsearchable riches, growing the more we use them, multiplying in our very hands wondrous riches; riches of God; wealth of Christ. This is our possession through him who loved us and gave himself for us. We bless thee for these upliftings of soul, if even for but one day in the week. Surely we cannot fall back to the old level after such inspiration and benediction. Fall we shall, but not so far down as yesterday; even in the fall we rise; in returning from heaven to earth we find ourselves nearer heaven than before. Thus little by little, a step at a time, we rise toward purity, completeness, and consequent repose. We need the bread of life every day; Lord, evermore give us this bread. This is the true bread which cometh down from heaven. We know its taste; we are refreshed by its nutrition; we grow stronger by eating such heavenly food. Take us more entirely under thy care every day; obliterate our selfishness; give us to feel that though the smith may work hard and make long sharp weapons, they shall all rust in the very place where they were made if they were intended to hurt any child of thine. Save us from making weapons in our own defence; save us from the insanity of taking care of ourselves. Put thine arms around us. Let thy smile be our light and our cheer, and let some word of thine sound the heavenly music in our heart's hearing, and then the angels will be nearer than the enemies, and our life shall have no sign of injury upon it, because of the infinite defence of God's almightiness. Amen.

Act 20:30-38

30. And from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.

31. Wherefore watch ye [another pastoral term], remembering that by the space of three years I ceased not to admonish every one night [Acts 20:9 , ff.; the figure of the wakeful shepherd still maintained] and day with tears [2 Corinthians 2:4 ; 2 Corinthians 11:29 . Note the special pastoral care of "each one"].

32. And now I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are sanctified [G. "give you an allotment amid all the sanctified"].

33. I coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel [for reason see Act 20:35 ].

34. Ye yourselves know that these hands ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me.

35. In all things I gave you an example, how that so labouring ye ought to help the weak [in faith], and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.

36. And when he had thus spoken, he kneeled down and prayed with them all.

37. And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him,

38. Sorrowing most of all for the word which he had spoken, that they should behold his face no more. And they brought him on his way unto the ship.

The Character In the Charge

Having this charge put into our hands to form a judgment of the speaker, what inferences regarding him and his work would be drawn? Do not let the mind travel beyond the four corners of this one particular charge. The evidence is before you; looking carefully at it, in all its aspects and relations, what opinion would you form respecting the man who delivered this particular speech to the elders of the Church at Ephesus? Evidently, in the first instance, here is a man over whom the spiritual has infinitely greater influence than the material. This man concerns himself burningly, and with passionateness and fanaticism, respecting things that are not of the earth and of time. He seems to see presences which are not patent to the eyes of the body. He is evidently ruled by considerations which are not limited by time and space. He speaks a strange language; he is more a ghost than a man. What is his meaning? Right or wrong, his meaning is intense; right or wrong, the subject which engages him burns in him like an inextinguishable fire. He is a fanatic, or an enthusiast; he is carried away by some spiritual extravagance. He speaks as a man might speak who is bound to an altar, and to whom the sacrificial fire was about to be applied. Surely he is operating under the influence of the wildest hallucination. But it is no hallucination to his mind; it has shape, features, expression, tone, colour, life; it is a Figure that puts out a more than human hand, and takes his hand lovingly in its almighty grasp. The speaker of this charge be he whom he may is full of it. He evidently believes that instincts are more divine than formal logic. He clearly believes that there is something in man that cannot be covered, fed, satisfied by anything that grows on earth or shines in the sky; call it feeling, imagination, passion, spirituality, divinity, it is something with an aching necessity that scorns the proffered aliment of time, and asks if there be no better food in all the spaces of the universe. The man is clearly superstitious, of a highly excitable temperament, quite a fanatic, wholly beside himself, not at all practical; a man if we may so figure him rather with great strong pinions with which to fly, than with strong and sturdy feet with which to walk the solid earth. Still he means it all. These are not artificial tones; there is what we know by the name of soul in them. We may pity the hallucination, but we must admire the earnestness. We may look on bewildered even to stupefaction as we gaze upon a noble soul following shadows, and chasing bubbles, and crying to eery ghosts to help him in life's long travail. Still he is a noble soul. If he were less intense, we should despise him, or at least distrust him; but he is so whole-hearted that our pity is elevated by our admiration. Be he whom he may, and what in other respects he may, he is, on the face of this speech, an honest man.

Looking further into his unique and energetic eloquence, it is evident that this man counts his life as of less value than his work. "Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy." That is a new standard of valuation; that is a new mint and stamping of old words and venerable tradition. This man has so worked that his "course" his "ministry" has become to him a greater quantity than his very life. We may outlive ourselves; our work is our greater self; our ministry is our immortality. If the Church could learn this lesson, the Church would know the mystery of crucifixion with Christ. The Church would get rid of the idea that godliness is bound up with opinion and dogma only, and would pass into the glorious ecstasy which counts all things loss that Christ may be won. We speak of our lives being dearer than anything cur lives can contain. We reason superficially and sophistically; when we come to a right view of things we shall see that to do our duty bravely is a greater thing than to live many days upon the earth; to suffer heroically is the true solution of life's holy mystery. This man will turn failure into success. When he has given up his life, all other gifts become easy; when he has given himself, all he has is contained in the complete and sacrificial donation. Christ gave himself, and we must present ourselves "living sacrifices." This man grows more fanatical. He has risen to the point at which life itself is despised as compared with what he superstitiously calls his "ministry," or fatalistically calls his "course." A ghostly power called destiny has got hold of him, and wrought in him a sublime contempt for all bribes, flatteries, and earthward allurements. He has gone from the tribe of practical men; he is the victim of a spiritual extravaganza. Poor soul! We would have detained him in our company if we could, but such passion would have burned down the walls of our prison; such sacrifice would have turned our cold prayers into blasphemies; such heroism would have made our little efforts contemptible in our own eyes. So he has gone to live an ideal life in ideal spaces. Peace be with his soul!

But a third view of the speech leads us to inquire whether, in thus regarding Paul as a superstitious and fanatical man, we are not in error. Reading single lines of the speech, we feel that Paul is insane, in the sense of being unduly transported with what he believes to be spiritual realities; but reading the speech from end to end, he is really a man of wondrous mental grasp. It is a noble speech; it is a statesman's eloquence. This man is no fanatic; he has power to walk upon the solid earth, and he looks well as he does so; there is no crouch in his royal gait. He is most tender, shepherdly, careful, practical. He does not want to have his work frayed away or overturned by the cruel strength of the enemy; he would have his work stand for ages; he speaks like a man who has been building from eternity. No honest reader can despise the intellectual force of the man who made the speech which is now our text. Read it through from the beginning to the end, and hear its solemn music; mark its massive strength; note its comprehensive grasp, and be quieted by its sublime repose. When we hear some men speak, we feel how rash a thing it would be to contradict them. They are not men likely to be misled by sophisms; they are not made of the material which easily yields to new experiments; they have a solid look; they are men one would like to consult upon practical questions; their very presence and manner of dealing with things would lead one to wish that in all the crises of life we could have them near to suggest, inspire, and strengthen. Reading this speech of Paul, such are my personal feelings regarding him. He is not a little man; he is no trifler. You may differ with him, but the very necessity of differing with him will involve you in a tremendous controversy. It is not a mere difference, a verbal diversity of judgment; it is root-and-branch work; you are either with him wholly or away from him entirely, and that very fact establishes by collateral and incidental evidence the greatness of the man, the multitudinousness of the elements which make up his great personality.

So we begin to modify the first judgment we formed as to Paul's fanaticism. He gradually comes nearer to us, and we feel that if we have mistaken his stature, our mistake was due to the distance which separated us from him. What appears to be a little speck in the far-away cloud may prove in reality to be a royal eagle, when the flight is over and the noble adventurer has returned from the gates of the sun.

Looking again at the charge, we cannot but see that what began in the sublimest theology concludes in the noblest beneficence. "So labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." We thought he was a fanatic; he now stands before us as the advocate of the poor, and the defender of those who have no helper. This is the complete orb of religious character: theology mounting to the very throne of God, beneficence stooping to the very lowest of the needy creatures amongst whom we live. The theology that is not sphered off by morality, beneficence, sacrifice, is a sublime lie. Now, our first impression about the man's passionate fanaticism is wholly corrected, and we apologize to him for having for one moment thought that he was lost in spiritual ecstasies. Only men who are capable of such theological excitement are capable of lifelong and life-sacrificing beneficence. The charity that is not lighted at the fires of heaven will be blown out by the winds of earth. For a time it may seem to be beautiful, but, being without root, in the necessity and divinity of things it cannot live. Characterize it by what figure you may, whatever is not fixed in God cannot live as long as God.

So perusing the charge in its wholeness and unity, I bow before the great Apostle as before the noblest of his kind the very prince of the Church; the supreme man amongst mortals; the favoured one who saw more of heaven's light and more of heaven's magnitude than any other man. We may well weep with the elders of the Church; we may well kiss our great teacher with our heart's lips, for there are no farewells so tearing, so destructive, as the farewells of the soul. Other farewells may be made up, other vacancies can be supplied; but who can represent the man who has loved our souls, held fellowship with our spirits, spoken more tenderly than he supposes himself to our very inmost life, and who has stood for us when we ourselves were dumb, as advocate and intercessor before God, in the name of the Saviour of the world? There are no endearments so tender as the endearment created by religious understanding and sympathy. All other unions perish, all other associations are but for the passing moment; immortality, true kindred, absolute identity of spirit, thought, purpose, can be found in Christ alone.

We do not know our apostles until they tell us we shall see their faces no more. How kind of them to give us work to do which lies nearest to our hands! Paul did not conclude with some thunder-burst of theological eloquence which might have been variously interpreted, but he concluded with these words which a child can understand which only God himself can fully illustrate which the Cross alone entirely exemplifies "It is more blessed to give than to receive."