*[j There is in our day a marvellous idolatry of talent ; it is a strange and a grievous thing to see how men bow down before genius and success. Draw the distinction sharp and firm between these two things — goodness is one thing, talent another. The Son of Man came, not as a scribe, but as a poor working man. He was a Teacher, but not a Eabbi. When once the idolatry of talent enters the Church then farewell to spirituality ; when men ask their teachers not for that which will make them more humble and godlike, but for the excitement of an intellectual banquet, then farewell to Christian progress.1
1 F. W. Robertson.
ACTS i. 8 7
3. Was this power, then, to be a faculty of working miracles ? Our thoughts seem to gravitate naturally towards such a sup- position. A certain limited power of this description, varying apparently with the spiritual state of the disciples themselves, had been granted to them during our Lord's ministry. At one time the disciples rejoice that the devils are subject to them ; at another they are powerless to relieve the lunatic at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration. But after the Ascension, and because of it, they were to do works even greater than those of their Divine Master. " Greater works than these shall he (that believeth) do, because I go to my Father." The gift of miracles depended on the Ascension in the same sense as did the gift of the promised Comforter ; and it was natural to identify the two gifts, or to regard the former as a chief result or fruit of the latter. But miracle was not of the essence of that power which the Apostles were to receive at Pentecost. It was rather an evidence, an occasional accompaniment, an ornament of the central gift, than the gift itself.
T| Miracle is by no means a resistless instrument for propa- gating a doctrine. Unbelief has many methods for escaping its force. Where it cannot insinuate trickery, it has no scruple about hinting at the agency of Beelzebub. The state of mind which resists the historical and prophetical evidences of Eevelation is likely to deal somewhat summarily with a natural wonder, how- ever well attested, in the domain of sense. Our Lord Himself tells us that this is so: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead."
4. Nor did the power consist in the ministerial commission itself : in the authorization to preach the Word and to administer the Sacraments. Undoubtedly, in a profound sense of the term, that commission, with its several elementary portions, is a power unlike any other which God has given to His creatures here below. But our Lord had already solemnly and fully com- missioned His Apostles. They were in full possession of all powers necessary to feed and teach the Lord's people, but it would seem that until the Day of Pentecost these powers were like undeveloped faculties, latent in the souls of the Apostles, but unexercised. Something else was needed, some vivifying heavenly force which should quicken and stimulate these hidden
8 POWER FOR WITNESS
energies, and, like the rain or the sunshine upon the dormant vitality of the seed or the shoot, should provoke them into an outburst of energetic life.
5. Wherein did this power which the Apostles were to receive consist ? Creating political ascendancy, yet utterly distinct from it ; fertilizing intellectual power, yet differing in its essence from the activity of mere vigorous unsanctified intellect; working moral miracles, gifted (it may be) to work physical wonders, yet certainly in itself more persuasive than the miracle it was em- powered to produce; intimately allied with, and the natural accompaniment of, distinct ministerial faculties, yet not necessarily so ; what is this higher, this highest power, this gift of gifts, this transforming influence, which was to countersign as if from heaven what had previously been given by the Incarnate Lord on earth, and was to form out of unlettered and irresolute peasants the evangelists of the world ? It was spiritual, it was personal, it was moral power.
TJ Spiritual power may be felt rather than described or analysed. It resides in or it permeates a man's whole circle of activities ; it cannot be localized, it cannot be identified exclu- sively with one of them. It is an unearthly beauty, whose native home is in a higher world, yet which tarries among men from age to age, since the time when the Son of God left us His example, and gave us His Spirit. It is nothing else than His spiritual presence, mantling upon His servants ; they live in Him ; they lose in Him something of their proper personality; they are absorbed into, they are transfigured by, a Life altogether higher than their own; His voice blends with theirs, His eye seems to lighten theirs with its sweetness and its penetration; His hand gives gentleness and decision to their acts ; His heart communicates a ray of its Divine charity to their life of narrower and more stagnant affection; His soul commingles with theirs, and their life of thought, and feeling, and resolve is irradiated and braced by His. " If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." " It is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." *