Scribe, or Priest, or Buler, or Elder among the people. All were, apparently, '^nnleamed and ignorant men/' (Acts iv. 13.) All were poor.
There is something deeply instructiye in the fact which is now before us. It shows ns that our Lord Jesus Christ's kingdom was entirely independent of help from this world. His Church was not built by might, or by power, but by the Spirit of the living God. (Zech. iv. 6.) — ^It supplies us with an unanswerable pfoof of the divine origin of Christianity. A religion which turned the world upside down, while its first preachers were all poor men, must needs have been from heaven. If the apostles had pos- sessed money to give their hearers, or been followed by armies to frighten them, an infidel mis'ht well deny that
poverty of our Lord's (^ciples cuts away such arguments from beneath ihe infidel's feet. With a doctrine most unpalatable to the natural heart, — with nothing whatever to bribe or compel obedience, — a few lowly Galileans shook the world, and changed the face of the Roman empire. One thing only can account for this. The Gospel of Christ, which these men proclaimed, was the truth of God. Let us remember these things, if we ever strive to do any work for Christ, and beware of leaning on an arm of flesh. Let us watch against the secret inclination, which is natural to all, to look to money, or learning, or high patronage, or great men's support, for success. If we want to do good to souls, we must not look first to the powers of this world. We should begin where the Church of Christ began. We should seek agents filled with the Holy Ghost.