Tf " Ye shall be my witnesses." Think of all that this word means. What is a witness ? The light we need here is light that we have by our common use of the Anglicized form of this Greek word "martyr." "Ye shall be martyrs." I do not wish to suggest that Jesus meant necessarily that these men would all die for Him. We have come to use that word "martyr" as referring only to such as seal their testimony with their blood. I am not suggesting that we should abandon that particular use of the word, for it is a great and glorious use of the word to-day. The men who sealed their testimony with their blood were martyrs, but they were martyrs before they died. Smithfield's fires never made martyrs : they revealed martyrs. Persecution never makes a martyr: it finds him
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out and wraps him in the glory of flame that we may see him for evermore.1
We must consider our Lord's words in both their narrower and their wider application : (i.) as they relate in an especial sense to the Apostles, and (ii.) as they relate to each individual member of the Church.
i. The Apostles as Witnesses.
1. The charge expresses their Masters confidence in the Apostles in terms which could hardly be broader or more trustful. "Ye shall be my witnesses," it runs — my witnesses here where you are known, and in neighbouring lands, and then everywhere unto the uttermost parts of the earth. Observe the phrase, " my witnesses," not merely witnesses unto Me, but witnesses chosen by Me to take My place, to represent Me when I am not there to represent Myself. The trust and confidence of our Lord is almost awful in its absolute reality. He left no building, no writing, no material relics worthy of mention. He borrowed a room in a friend's house for His Last Supper and for the meetings of His little company. He borrowed the outward rite of one of the great sacraments from natural religion and the other from common life. His own special prayer has many points of contact with forms that existed before it. The number of the Apostles was apparently suggested by that of the tribes of Israel. Beyond these main foundations He left little that was definite, though there were indications that other existing usages of the religious life around Him were approved by Him and stamped with His recommenda- tion. He left it to His Apostles and their successors to combine and to develop these hints and beginnings and give them form and substance, but clearly under reservation that all such things should take a secondary place in His plan of salvation. Every- thing not specially ordered by Him in detail was clearly subject to a change in detail, and everything even when so ordered was subordinate to the supreme duty of bringing His Person and Life before the world. That was the great commission finally impressed on the Apostles. He did not obscure their duty to be ministers of His Word and Sacraments, to be preachers of
1 G. Campbell Morgan.
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the Gospel, to be pastors of men, and to bring men to God. He had revealed all this in many ways, and set it forth in brilliant and definite outlines. But the dominant thought is surely the last : it is the duty of the Church above all things else, both in its ministers and in its members, to bear witness to Christ, His Person, His Love, His Presence. With this charge ringing in their ears, the Apostles set out to begin their work. We cannot doubt that it is to be the perpetually re- curring keynote to which the whole music of the Church is to be attuned to the end.
2. The Apostles are the links between Christ and Christendom. All we know of Him is through the impression produced on them. The last year of His ministry was almost entirely devoted to their training. The medium is singularly colourless; of themselves personally, with the exception of St. Peter, we know next to nothing. The sons of Zebedee appear as zealous partisans, and interesting notices of the hesitating Thomas and the practical Philip are given several times in the Fourth Gospel ; but otherwise they are but honoured names — their origin, their ministry, their martyrdoms, almost a blank. We must not look to them primarily as preachers, organizers, writers, but we must look to them rather in their character as witnesses.
TJ Dr. Frank Gunsaulus, of Chicago, has written in one of his books a sentence to this effect : " True statesmanship consists in discovering the way in which God is going and then moving things out of the way for Him." And I believe to-day that what we need supremely is to come to a re-discovery of the way in which God is going ; and in order to do that I personally feel that there is nothing more valuable than that we should return to the sources, to the beginnings of things — not that all the methods of the Spirit were exhausted in the early days, but that in the record of what then happened we have clearly defined for us the line of the Spirit's operations and the direction of God.1