Acts 28:30-31

Chapter 107

Prayer

Almighty God, thou art our refuge and strength. They are strong who live in God; they are immortal who touch thine eternity with faith and love and hope. They cannot die: the sword cannot cut them to their destruction, nor can they be blown away by the great wind, nor can the lion devour them. Behold, they are hidden in God's pavilion, and under the shadow of the wings Divine do they put their trust. We bless thee for the great strong ones who have led the way. We love their names; we love to think of their wonderful story and to read it until our hearts glow with the fire which made them hot. May we follow them as they followed Christ! May our hold upon Christ be complete! We do not now desire only to touch him: we would that he might dwell in us, abide with us, take up His abode with us, sup with us in lifelong festival. This desire is thy creation. This desire is not our own by origin, but it is now our own by adoption and conviction, and by all the delight that flows from its possession. Behold, this also cometh forth from the Lord of hosts. Fill us with this desire; may it be the supreme wish of our soul. Then shall it become its own answer, and the whole soul shall be filled with the light of God. We bless thee for all words that call us upward; we would answer all the challenges that draw our souls towards greater liberty and purer light. We know that these challenges are the voice of God in the soul. We bless thee that we are no longer deaf to thy calls. We hear them now as we never heard them before not only their great tones, telling of thy majesty, but their gentle whisperings, breathing the very tenderness of thy love. Blessed are they whose ears can hear, whose faculties are not dead, but are alive with prayer and burning with expectation. Let thy word be unto us various as the need of our life. Thine is an infinite word, and truly ours is an infinite necessity. Let thy word come to us according as we are able to bear it. We expect more from it; it is a great word, and no man hath ventured to name it, nor can the tongue of man tell it, or the heart of man conceive it. Thou wilt surprise us with greater revelations; thou wilt astonish the eye with light; thou wilt make the heart fill itself with reverent amazement in gazing upon the wonders of thy love. Yet the darkness is thine as well as the light. Thou hast a purpose in keeping us ignorant a while. We are growing even in the darkness; we are preparing even when we are not being surprised; the quietness is a mission; the standing still is progress; the waiting for God is the winning of a battle. Dry our tears when we dare not touch them with our own hand; speak comfortably to us when the affliction is too sore; make our bed; give us a song in the night time; cause the springs of water to burst forth when our thirst is hottest; lead us by the way that is right; never explain thyself to us, but fill us with thy love. The Lord's mercy be brighter than the summer light; the Lord's word come to us with the pomp of its own eternity and with the condescension of its infinite friendliness. Fill the house with thy glory. Let the angels all come; let the spirits of the just made perfect have some relation to us which we can, how dimly soever, realise; and may we feel that we are not orphans, waifs, lost things blown by the heedless wind, but part of the whole family in heaven and on earth.

We pray this prayer at the Cross, and at the Cross we tarry till the answer come. Amen.

Act 28:30-31

30. And Paul dwelt two whole years in his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him,

31. Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him.

A Retrospect and a Prospect

For further light upon the fate of the Apostle Paul, we must be indebted to the labours of learned inquirers. There are men who have made a special study of this subject, and to them we must look for fact and guidance. In the year 63 Paul was released, and returned to the East to continue his evangelistic and apostolic work. In July, 64, a great fire occurred at Rome, the fire being enkindled by the emperor himself, according to the testimony of the most learned historians and witnesses, but falsely charged upon the Christians. A great anti-Christian persecution thereupon arose. Christians were scattered everywhere; many were arrested and slain. Some think that the Apostle Paul visited the Britannic Isles, and that the great cathedral church of London St. Paul's points to that fact. His name would certainly be well known in England. Soldiers who had guarded him at Rome were drafted to London, Chester, York, and other military centres in England, and they could not but speak of the most illustrious prisoner ever given to their charge. About these movements we have no certain record. Paul was probably apprehended at Ephesus and conveyed to Rome, where he wrote his last letter, the Second Epistle to Timothy wrote it with his dying hand. It is something to have that last letter. It reads like the summary of a lifetime; it reads, too, like a will. A will! what had the Apostle to leave? To that letter we must turn for distinct information regarding our saintly hero. The days are few and solemn now; the hour of home-going is now chiming. We had better listen to him now, for presently the voice will cease. He knew that he was writing as a dying man. In chapter 2Ti 4:6 of the letter he says, "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand" "I am bound like a thing that is going to be laid upon the fire: my limbs are bound to one another; my arms are lashed round my body with iron hoops I am just waiting to be flung." What will he say now to a young minister? He will frighten the young man; he will utterly appal the rising youth who is supposed to be nearest to him and to have some kind of right to his mantle. Surely he will adopt another tone: he would hide the afflictions, say as little as possible about them, and would endeavour to allure rather by tender promise the young man who is to succeed him in the Apostolic function.

Even whilst the shadows were gathering around our hero he had a clear view of what he had done. In the seventh verse of the fourth chapter he says, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." What an epitaph! Truly we ourselves are witnesses of all these things. We could not have come upon this testimony from the outside with any familiarity or sympathy or recognition of the infinite scope and pathos of its meaning; but coming to it from our study of the whole record, having been with the Apostle night and day and seen him month after month in the great labour, we feel that he has at last selected the very words which most profoundly and most graphically describe the wonderful course through which he has passed. That is something. Were we to come upon a text like this from the outside, we might call it boastful, self-conscious, deeply dyed with the spirit of egotism; but when we come upon it along the historical line, when we know the man in and out intellectually, spiritually when we understand somewhat of his genius, and have felt the wonderfulness of his gracious temper, and have seen the long continuance of his inexhaustible patience, we feel that this is an inspired summary, that it is God that speaks rather than the mere man himself. We can testify he has well fought a good fight. He never shrank away from the contest; he was never wanting when the opportunity shaped itself into a crisis; he never said, "Pity me and let the blows be fewer and weaker"; he never asked for quarter; he will die a victor. You cannot kill such men!

Best of all, he says, "I have kept the faith." That explains all the rest. But for the faith, the fighting would have been a squabble, a controversy without meaning, a conflict without dignity; the course would have been sentimental, romantic, extravagant, from the worldly point of view absurd; but having kept the faith, the fight is lifted up into a Divine battle, and the course takes rank with the movements of the planets an infinite sweep, full of majesty, full of light. We cannot fight, or run, or do anything good and worthy except in proportion as we keep the faith. The courage is not in the hand; it is in the inner being. The explanation of life is not in circumstances; it is within that mysterious thing you call your self a holy of holies into which even you cannot critically enter: you can only adoringly and wonderingly abide. Without the faith we may have huge pretensions, great and rushing cloud for a time, enthusiasm that looks as if it would last, but which really cannot last because of want of connection with Divine fountains and energies. Lord, increase our faith; our grip of doctrine do thou make stronger, our love of truth purer, our insight almost like thine own omniscience. This is how heroes die.

Then Paul had not only a retrospect, but a prospect. Heaven seemed to come down to meet him: "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord... shall give me." This world is not enough; the time comes when we want to lay hold upon another. This is the marvellous action of something within us which we cannot define, but which, being defined for us, we can realise, and say, "You have used the right word; you have put into articulate expression what I have been trying to say ever since I was born." That is what inspiration does, and that is how inspiration proves itself to be of heaven. It interprets us to ourselves; it finds us opening a kind of heart-mouth, trying to say something which we cannot say, and it then tells us the word we are wanting to utter, and which the moment we hear we recognise. We never could have found it, but being found for us, we say, "This is none other than the gift of God." So we have a supernatural language, a wonderful set of words which must be extremely foolish to people who do not live along the line which must necessarily complete itself in their meaning and brightness. Wonderful words they are! "crown of righteousness"; "white linen of the saints"; "palms of victory"'; "heaven"; "home"; "New Jerusalem"; a "mountain that may not be touched," "Zion" by name; "infinite"; "everlasting." We do not use these words in the marketplace. No, but the marketplace is a small corner; it is hardly in the universe at all; it is only a little piece of the little world in which it is a speck, or is recognised by a mere name. But there comes a time in life when we want a new language great language: crowns, thrones, principalities, dominions, powers, heavens on heavens, infinite. O madness to the worldling necessity to the soul fire-touched, fire-stung. Do not speak of heaven till you feel your want of it, otherwise you will speak great words with a faltering tongue, and in their utterance you will spoil their meaning.

Some wonderful sources of consolation Paul opens even in this farewell letter. In the second chapter, ninth verse, he speaks of his "trouble" and of his "bonds"; but he instantly lifts up the subject as he was wont to do, saying, at the close of the verse, "but the word of God is not bound." That is a Pauline expression; doubt the pastoral epistles as to their authenticity who may, every now and then there is a touch of the old master-hand; they are a splendid imitation so splendid as to be no imitation, but a reality. In the twelfth verse also he lifts up the subject, saying, "If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us." In the thirteenth verse he lays down the sovereign doctrine which redeems the whole situation of life: "He cannot deny himself." That is the ground we occupy. We know that preaching is a failure, we know that sermons often go for nothing, we are perfectly well aware that many appeals die in the air without ever reaching the ears to which they were directed by the ardent speaker; we are perfectly aware of all this yet "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord," because the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. We stand upon the word eternal; we do not rest upon the transient accident. What will Paul say now to his son in the faith? Surely he will say, "Child, return, I have led thee a weary way; I have spoken words to thee which must have the effect of falsehoods; let my suffering be an example to thee: return to domestic quietude and to natural obscurity." What does the will say? Read the will! We applaud earthly heroes who dying bid men fight; we are proud of them; we call them great men, and we remember their name; we quote what they say and turn it into poetic form and recite it and applaud it.

Chapter 108

Prayer

Almighty God, speak unto us, for thou hast now given unto us the hearing ear and the understanding heart. This is thy holy gift; this, indeed, is the very miracle of grace. Our faculties are now of use; we begin to see the purpose of our creation. By thy grace in Christ Jesus, we are enabled to stand in thy light, and to see somewhat of the outline of thy truth. This is a great vision; for this we bless thee with ardent love. We knew not the great world before; but now we enter into larger spaces, and enjoy boundless liberties, and feel that we are no longer children of the earth and prisoners of time, but sons of God and born for eternity. So then we are lifted up with great elevation of thought and feeling; the world in all its littleness is far below us, and the great new sky revealed by thy grace heightens and brightens above us, and we are challenged to arise and take possession of the inheritance of the saints in light. We are no longer little in our thought and bounded in our feeling and hope: we have escaped the chain, we are captives no longer; we are out in God's boundless firmament, yet are we centred to his eternal throne. The Son has made us free; therefore are we free indeed. Thou hast shown us the meaning of the letter and led us into the liberty of the spirit. It is a glorious liberty! We feel its inspiration; we would answer all its nobleness by larger service and deeper humility. Show us that thou art the Righteous One, tempering judgment with mercy. Thou wilt not overstrain us, for our strength is but weakness; thou wilt not flash upon us the intolerable glory, but reveal thyself unto us in growing light according to our growing capacity to receive it. God is Love. Thou dost remember that we are dust; thou wilt not oppress us with burdens grievous to be borne; thou knowest that our day here is a very short one, and thou hast caused it to be shorter still, by reason of the uncertainty of our possession of it. But we look onward to the other school, where the light is brighter, where the day is nightless, where the teaching is more direct; in thy light we shall there see light, and growing knowledge shall be growing humility, and growing power shall be growing service. This is our hope, and this our confidence, so that now we are but preparing for the great issue and the grand realisation. Meanwhile, let thy Book be unto us more and more precious, thy Sabbaths filled with a tenderer light, and every opportunity to know thy truth and study thy will more critical and more urgent. May we not reckon as those who have boundless time at their command, but rather as those who are uncertain of their next pulse, who are expecting the King and must be in readiness to meet him. Thus may we live under high discipline, in the enjoyment of great delight, eager with expectancy, calm with confidence, inspired by hope, yet resting in the completeness of Divine assurance. Thus shall our life be a mystery Divine, a creation of God, an infinite apocalypse. We have come from out-of-the-way places to one home this day. We represent many dwellings, but we cling to the one house which holds us all within its hospitable embrace. This is our Father's house, where there is bread enough and to spare, where the servant may become a son and the son receive duly double assurance of his sonship. We would seize the opportunity; we would rise to the inspiration of this new hope; we would dwell within the security of thy Zion and know thy banner over us is Love. Thou hast led us by a strange way: thou hast often disappointed us, but only to enrich us with still brighter hopes; thou hast set mysteries in our families which terrified us because we found no solution of their meaning; thou hast cut the heart in two and made the life sore at every point by reason of the ingratitude of some, the stubbornness and selfishness of others; in some houses thou hast turned the day into night, and afflicted the night with sevenfold darkness. But thou art leading us all the time, chastening us, mellowing us, perfecting our hearts in the riches of thy grace and enriching us with the wealth of thy love. Others are wholly at ease: they have not known the weight of darkness, the sting of disappointment, the bitterness of unspeakable woe; and therein thou hast kept from them the highest joys. They know nothing of heavenly delights, of healing after disease, of joy after sorrow, of the song that comes in the morning which succeeds the long night of waiting. We would not change our places with them; our wounds have been the beginning of health, our distresses have been the roots of our purest joys, our disappointments have led us through crooked and thorny ways right into the light where stands the eternal throne. We will always tarry at the Cross: we can rest only there; we can read all its superscriptions, but high above them all the writing of God "Behold the Lamb, that taketh away the sins of the world." That is the writing of thine own finger; that is the Gospel of thine own heart. We read it once, and again, and still again, and as we read the light grows and the music increases, and the Lamb descends from the Cross and ascends as Intercessor into the heavens, and begins the infinite prayer of his priestly love. These are the mysteries in which we hide our littleness; these are the doors at which we wait until, opened from within, we be admitted into the inner places, the sanctuary of the heavens. Amen.

An Epitome

Today we close the Acts of the Apostles. It is not, therefore, a happy day for me. We have lived so long in the company of the great men who fill this sacred portion of the Holy Scripture that we feel as if called upon to speak a very pathetic and sad farewell. This comes of reverent familiarity with things Divine. We have not allowed the familiarity to descend into frivolity; but, having kept the sacred line of true friendship all these many days, we feel as if turning our back upon a host of friends whose comradeship we should like to have continued in all its freshness and stimulus until we enter together into the common city which is our home. Thus we leave man after man, church after church, and book after book. We no sooner begin than we end; our delight is cut off in its ecstasy, and just as our expectation begins to burn into that glad agony which the heart understands, behold, the vision ceases, and we are sent back into shadows and desert places.

Look at the Acts of the Apostles as a whole, supposing the little book to be in your hands in its unity. It is a living thing; it is like nothing but itself The Master is not in it visibly, and yet he is throbbing in every line of it influentially. It is a bush that burns. Strange looks we have seen come out of it, and voices above voices and under-voices marvellous subtleties of tone only to be explained by the Divine and supernatural element. We have studied together the Gospel by Matthew and the Acts of the Apostles; putting the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles together, what a marvellous reproduction we have of the Pentateuch! These four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles together constitute the Pentateuch of the New Testament; and if you will take the Pentateuch of Moses with the Gospel Pentateuch and compare the one with the other, you will be struck with the marvellous analogies and correspondences between the two, which, being duly connected and interpreted, constitute an illustration of what is meant by the Divine inspiration of Holy Scripture. What have we in the second Pentateuch? How did the first Pentateuch begin? With creation. How does the second Pentateuch begin? With creation. What was the first creation? The moulding of matter, the settlement and distribution of vast spaces and lights and forces. What is the second creation? A Church, a living universe men the planets; souls the burning suns, redeemed lives the great and immortal heavens. The Son is Creator as well as the Father; yea, the very old creation, the tabernacle of dust and light, the heavens and the earth these were all made for the Son, by the Son; he was before all things as he is above all things, so that in his creation a spiritual, gracious human creation he pales the little universe and puts it into its right place a mere speck upon the infinite being of God. So then we have our New Testament Pentateuch, and we cannot do without it, because it is fall of history; and therein it resembles the first Pentateuch full of anecdote, story, tragedy, change, movement, colour: a wonderful beginning and the only possible beginning from the highest standpoint, not a beginning in great doctrine, profound philosophies and metaphysics, all these lie thousands of miles along the road; no man may fly after them, or plunge into them with heedless impetuosity. We begin with matter, we begin with light and force, with water and earth, with things that fly and things that swim; and then we pass into the human tragedy, and through all the marvellous evolutions of history, we come into doctrine, philosophy, spiritual thought, the inner meaning, the marvellous music of things. So it is in the New Testament. We begin with a little Child, to what he may grow we know not; great is his name Immanuel: God God with us, the great God, the great Man. Now we must go forward into historical movements, activities, collisions, contradictions; now we must be lost in the centre of dusty, cloudy battlefields and then emerge into wide spaces where the summer spreads her banquet, where the air is clear of all but sweetest music. That is God's way of training the individual life. We all begin, so to say, Pentateuchally; we all have five books, or at least five chapters of history creation, history, movement, activity, hardly knowing what we are doing moved, touched, stung, led, and wondering how it will all issue, in what eventuation it will establish itself, and what it will prove when the process has been completed. It enriches one's thought and establishes one's heart in the tender grace of God to see how the lines of life correspond with one another: how things are matched today by things that happened yesterday; how one life is part of some other life, how one nation belongs to all the nations, and to mark how God has not been making detached links without connection or association, but has rather been fastening those links together into a great chain, a golden chain the first link fastened to his throne, the chain dropped down, link after link added, and, lo, it begins to rise again at the other end and comes back, and the links form a chain and the chain a circle and the centre the very throne of God. We cannot do without the historical line. Man must begin with history, he cannot begin with thinking; man must begin with toys, he cannot begin with ideas, abstract thoughts, and emotions that involve metaphysical mysteries. He must have a garden to work in, he must have a flock to keep, he must have a vineyard to dress; every night he must tell how the day has been spent; and thus he is led on into the great service, and into the fidelity that keeps no diary because it is so complete as to be beyond mere registration and beyond that book-keeping which is supposed to guarantee itself against the perfidies of felonious hands. But we must begin with the garden; man thinks he is doing something when he is tilling a garden. We must begin with objective work, outside work; it is adapted to us. The absorption, the speechless contemplation, the song without words these are the after-comings, the marvellous transformations. Meanwhile, keep thy lamp burning, watch thy door with all faithfulness, and attend to thy little garden plot as if it were the whole of God's universe; and afterwards thou shalt come to the higher studies the nobler culture, the richer, deeper peace.

Looking at the Acts of the Apostles as a whole, what a representative book it is! What varieties of character; what contradictions; what miracles of friendship; what bringing together of things that apparently are without relation and between which cohesion is, from our stand point, simply impossible! We have marked the characters as the panorama has passed before us these years; we wonder how ever they came together, how any one book can hold them; and yet, as we have wondered, we have seen men settle into relation and complement one another so as to furnish out the whole circle with perfect accuracy of outline. We belong to one another. The hand cannot say to the foot, "I have no need of thee"; nor can the ear say to the eye, or the eye to the ear, "I have no need of thee." All those men in the moving panorama Apostolic belonged, somehow, to one another, sphered one another out into perfectness of service and endurance. The human race is not one man; one man is not the human race. The difficulty we have with ourselves and with one another is the difficulty of not perceiving that every one of us is needful to make up the sum total of God's meaning. Failing to see that, we have what is called "criticism," so that men are remarked upon as being short of this faculty, wanting in that capacity, destitute of such and such qualification, not so rich in mental gift as some other man; and thus we have such foolish talking and pointless criticism. Man is one. God made man, not men; he redeemed man, he became man. Your gift is mine; mine is yours. We are a total, not a fraction; not carping individuals, but one household built on one rock, a living temple raised upon a living Corner-stone. Why fix upon individuals and remark upon their imperfections and their shortcomings? They claim the virtues of their very critics; they leap up in the hands of their vivisectors and say, "Your life is ours; your strength should perfect our weakness." The world will not learn that lesson. The world is lost in selfishness. Christianity is now a game of selfishness, that is to say, resolving itself into "Who can get into heaven? who can safely escape into heaven?" a question that ought never to be asked; it is the worst and meanest selfishness. Who can fight best, suffer best, give most, do most, wait most patiently? these are the great questions which, being honestly asked by the soul, ennoble the soul that asks them, and challenge the life to the nobler services which the fancy contemplates. So the men in the Acts of the Apostles belong to one another. Think of Peter and Luke: Peter all fire; Luke quiet, thoughtful, contemplative, musing, taking observations and using them for historical purposes. Think of Paul and Barnabas; think of all the names that are within the record, and see how wondrous is the mosaic. There are only two great leaders. Were I to ask the youngest of my fellow students, now when we are closing the book, whose names occur most frequently in the Acts of the Apostles, hardly a child could hesitate in the reply "Peter and Paul." They seem to overshadow everybody; their names burn most ardently and lustrously on the whole record. That is quite true; but where would they have been but for those who supported them, held up their arms, made up their following and their companionship? If they are pinnacles, the pinnacle only expresses the solidity and massiveness of the building that is below. You see the pinnacle from afar; but that pinnacle does not exist in itself, by itself, for itself; it is the upgathering of the great thought, and represents to the farthest-off places the sublime fact that the tabernacle of God is with men upon the earth. To be in the record at all is my ambition; to be on the first page or on the last, to be anywhere in it, that is the beginning of heaven. This is a representation of the Church of all time. You have your great names and your lesser names; you have Peter and James and John and Paul, and you have Philip and Thomas and James and Simon and Judas. To be in the list is enough. No man can write his own name in the list. Sometimes it is absolutely essential that a man should make his own signature, do it with his own finger, either in letters or by mark; his own living hand of flesh must have touched the page. In other records we are written down by consent. We are thankful for the honour of the registration; we have been invited to form a part of the commonwealth, and we have assented to the proposition. No man can write his name in the Lamb's book of life. Every man must open the door of his heart to admit the knocking Saviour as his Guest. God works; man works. There is a marvellous commerce between the Divine and the human, the human and the Divine; the result of that commerce, being happily consummated, is sonship, is liberty, is heaven!

We cannot look at the book as a whole without being struck with its candour. Nothing is kept back; there is no desire to make men appear better than they really were; all the sin is here, all the shame, all the virtue, all the honour everything is set down with an impartial and fearless hand. That is one of the strongest incidental proofs of the inspiration of the whole book. This is not a series of artificial curves or carvings; the men we have had to deal with are men of flesh and blood like ourselves wholly; about their humanity we can have no doubt. Here is a record of selfishness: the story of Ananias and Sapphira is not kept back. "How much better," some would have said, "to omit it." As well omit the story of Adam and Eve. In every book there is an Adam and Eve, if it be a faithful portraiture of human life; in every soul there is an Adam and Eve, a fall, an expulsion, a day of cherubic fire that asserts the sovereignty of outraged righteousness. These are not inventions, but they are representations of ourselves as we know ourselves, and therefore we can confirm the book. The accident varies, the substance is constant; the mere outside of color changes in every instance, but the heart is bad with selfishness throughout. Dissensions are reported: Paul and Barnabas separated; Paul withstood Peter "to the face, because he was to be blamed." Peter to be blamed! That was an honest book! There is no man-painting here; there is no touch of merely exhibitional genius; there is no attempt to get up. a Christian exhibition in the Acts of the Apostles with the motto, "Behold the perfect men!" There is a stern reality about this that compels the attention which it charms. Christianity is not represented here as to its earthly lot in any very attractive way. Who would say, after reading the Acts of the Apostles, were we to judge by the fate of its apostles and teachers, "Let us also be Christians"? There was not a noble man in the fraternity; there was hardly a man in the whole brotherhood that could trace his ancestry beyond yesterday. If you wanted to join an unfashionable sect, the Christian sect would have presented to you innumerable and overwhelming advantages; if you wanted to suffer, Christianity would find the opportunity. It is a record of suffering, misrepresentation, persecution, terrible sorrow and agony; a record of cold and hunger and thirst and nakedness and night-travelling. The men of the Acts of the Apostles wandered about in deserts and in mountains, in dens and in caves of the earth; they had no festival, no banner, no music, no honour amongst men. We thought that towards the last surely we should hear some better account of it; but in the last chapter Christianity is represented as the sect which is everywhere "spoken against." All of these circumstances and instances illustrate the candour, the intense honesty and reality of the record. Human authors study probabilities. It is a canon amongst literary men that even in a romance nothing shall be put down though it may actually have occurred which exceeds the bounds of average probability. The circumstance you narrate you may have seen, but you are not allowed by literary criticism to put down anything that is merely phenomenal so extraordinary as probably not to occur more than once in a thousand years. You must keep to probability if you would build according to technical rules. There is no study of parts, proportions, colours in the Acts of the Apostles; there is no poetry-making, no romance elaboration; things are put down every night as they occurred every day there stands the record, with all blotches, blemishes, faults, all heroisms and nobilities, all endurances and glorious successes; nothing is extenuated; the whole tale is told exactly and literally as it occurred.

Reading the Acts of the Apostles through from beginning to end at one sitting which is the only right way of reading any book in order to get into the swing of its thought and the music of its rhythm reading the Acts of the Apostles straight through from the first verse to the last, I feel as if I had been present in a great and busy seed-time. I have come home, as it were, from a great field that has just been sown all over sown with truth seeds, sown with buried men, sown with buried deeds. The seed thus sown does not look very beautiful. Tomorrow it will look like a desert, and for a week or a month there may be no change, but in a week or a month more there will be first the blade; by-and-by, the ear; by-and-by, the full corn in the ear; by-and-by, the flashing sickle in the hand of the angel; by-and-by, the harvest home; by-and-by, Christ's contentment the satisfaction of his soul.

This is the way to judge a book namely: to judge it in its wholeness; and this is the way to judge of any Church, or of any institution, or of any man. I must not take your individual actions and attempt to find the whole character in any one conversation, or in any one little sentence; I must not take you at unawares, and when I see you in high temper say, "See how bad he is!" I must not find you in some act of apparent meanness and judge the whole character by it, saying, "See the man's dishonourableness!" I must not find you in some solitary fault, or under the pressure of some tremendous temptation, and say, "See in that instance the whole man!" Society judges so. Harsh judgments are founded upon little detached instances of temper or of spirit; but when he comes who made us made us so marvellously, made no two of us alike when he comes who knows our ancestry, our birth, our physical constitution, our advantages and disadvantages, our trials and our sorrows; when he comes who knows us altogether, he will judge us in the totality of our life, and mayhap the worst of us may be recognised by the redeeming Son of God as having upon him the sprinkled blood which will save the life from the destroying stroke.