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ministry in Galilee, so the Baptism of the Church was to be preparatory to a world-wide ministry; a ministry not, like His own, creative of a new order, but one of simple testimony ; yet to be fulfilled only in the power of the Spirit of God.1
The text contains three clauses : (1) Ye shall receive power, (2) when the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and (3) ye shall be my witnesses. These clauses suggest three divisions under whioh we may study the subject —
I. Power.
II. The Source of Power. III. The Use of Power.
I.
Power. "Ye shall receive power."
There are two Greek words (l^ouala and Uva^c) in the New Testament, both of which are rendered by our word " power." The one refers to power in the sense of rule or authority, the other means ability, strength, or force. It is the latter of these two words that is used here.
What was this " power " which the Apostles were to receive ? As a matter of fact, what power did they receive ?
1. Was it, as they anticipated, political power ? Certainly, in the course of years the Church of Christ did acquire something very like the power of the sceptre. The prophecies of Isaiah seemed to intimate that this would be so: in the Evangelical prophet the Church is already represented as a spiritual empire, surrounded with the circumstances of temporal greatness. But when did this form of power present itself? Not in her first years of missionary enterprise and of abundant martyrdom. But when she was no longer composed of a despised minority, when by a long catalogue of labours and sufferings she had won her way to the understandings and to the hearts of multitudes, she forthwith acquired power in the State. Found in all the walks of
1 H. B. Swete.
ACTS i. 8 5
life, in all the provinces of the great world-empire, and in regions beyond its frontiers ; an intellectual force, when other thought was languishing or dying ; a focus of high moral effort, when the world around was a very flood of revolting wickedness ; a bond of the closest union, when all else was tending to social divergence and disruption of interests ; she became a political force. Such she was long before Constantine associated the Cross with the Koman purple. Political power came to the Church, at first unbidden, and in many cases unwelcomed. It was a current charge against the primitive Christians that they neglected civil and political duties. But political power came to them from the nature of the case, and inevitably : the Gospel was necessarily a popular moral influence, and it could not be this on a great scale without tending to become a power in the State.
IF Undoubtedly political power was given to the Church by the loving providence of our Lord, as an instrument whereby to promote man's highest good. But if such power was an oppor- tunity often used for the highest purposes and with the happiest effect, it was also a temptation to worldly ambition, and even to worse sins, often yielded to with the most disastrous results. Who can doubt this after studying in the history of the great "Western See such lives as, for example, those of a Julius n. or of a Leo X. ? Who can doubt this after an impartial consideration of the history of other portions of the Church nearer home, which have purchased a political status at the heavy cost of sacrificing spiritual energy and freedom? He who said at the first, "My kingdom is not of this world," is perhaps bringing Christians everywhere back by the course of His providences to the fuller acknowledgment of this primal truth. If political power had been of the essence of our Lord's promise to His Apostles, we might well lose heart ; but there is no cause for despondency, if the power which the Apostles were to receive was of a higher and. more enduring character. Political power is after all but a clumsy instrument for achieving spiritual success.1
2. Was, then, the power in question intellectual poiuer ? The Gospel has undoubtedly lightened up man's understanding and fertilized his thought. Knowledge is of itself power ; and know- ledge on the highest and most interesting of all subjects is a very high form of power. For knowledge is the motive and warrant of action, and they whose eye ranges over two worlds occupy a more
1 H. P. Liddon.
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commanding position than they who see only one. A certain power of this description was undoubtedly a result of the gift of Pentecost. Our Lord had dwelt on the illuminating office of the Comforter : " He shall guide you into all truth." And the first Apostles needed such an assistance, since they were utterly uneducated men, with the narrowest of mental horizons. How wonderfully, on the day of Pentecost itself, is the thought of St. Peter fertilized and expanded ! The unlettered fisherman is suddenly the profound expositor of ancient prophecy, and within a short period his teaching brings him into collision with the Sadducean leaders of educated sceptical opinion. And in later years how rich and various are the intellectual gifts of the inspired Apostles of Christ ! And when we pass down into later ages, we find the promise of intellectual power fulfilled almost continuously in the annals of the Church. But was this in- tellectual power, swaying the thoughts of educated men, the chief, or even a main, element of the promised gift ? Surely not. The Gospel was meant for the whole human family; and the poor, in consideration of the hardness of their lot, had a first claim upon its preachers. Not many learned were called among the multitudes who first poured into the kingdom; and mere cultivated intellect is a sorry weapon wherewith to approach those who lack that cultivation which is necessary to understand it. The gift of Pentecost may indeed have included intellectual power ; a living, active soul is a thinking as well as a loving soul ; but the main essential gift itself was something beyond, something higher, something more universally acceptable, something more adapted to the soul of man, as man, something more capable of advancing the glory and of doing justice to the grace of God.