3. How does our trust save us ? Our trust does not save us, it makes a way for Christ to save us. We commit and surrender ourselves to Him to be saved in His own way. But from the office it fills, the part it acts, and the results it produces, trust evidently includes some other element. Especially it includes the element of sympathy. "Yea verily, and I count all things to be loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord : for whom I suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith : that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death ; if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead" (Phil. iii. 8-11). Not only does the Apostle value the excellency of the
ACTS xvi. 30, 31 149
knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord above all the advantages in which as a Jew he once gloried (enumerated in verses preceding), but he is in full and heartfelt sympathy with the way in which he has been saved in Christ. " That I may ... be found in him " ; which was to have, not his own righteousness, which was of the law, as the ground or procuring cause of his salvation, — which would have been another way than the way of grace and faith, even the way of works, — but the righteousness " which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith " ; that is, God's righteousness, which had been realized for him in Christ and was manifest in Christ's whole redeeming work.
fj A distinguished man once said that in early manhood he found deliverance from a guilty passion through a devoted attach- ment to a branch of science. The saving potency of a true and pure love for a good man or woman has never been without its witnesses. Let a man's life be taken possession of by a great affection, and what will it not do for him ? — cleanse his unclean heart, calm and chasten his hot and eager desires, bind him over to rectitude and faithfulness, and ever urge and keep him to his best. And it is just in this way Jesus Christ has been a Saviour to many in all lands and ages. The things named are not, of course, on the same level as the Christian attachment and loyalty, but they illustrate the same law — the redeeming energy of love — salvation through the quickening of a noble and commanding affection, love in the soul washing sin from the souL1
1 John Hunter,
An Unknown God.
*5*
Literature.
Burrell (D. J.), The Gospel of Gladness, 96.
Hessey (J. A.), Moral Difficulties, iii. 37.
Knight (W. A.), Things New and Old, 207.
Miller (J.), Sermons Literary and Scientific, 1st Ser., 63.
Neale (J. M.), Sermons preached in a Religious House, i. 27.
Palmer (A. S.), The Motherhood of God, 93.
Price (A. C), Fifty Sermons, x. 137.
Salmon (G.), Cathedral and University Sermons, 103.
Smith (H. A.), Things New and Old, 130.
Stryker (M. W.), The Well by the Gate, 73.
Tyng (S. H.), The People's Pulpit, New Series, iv. 233.
Vaughan (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), xi. No. 849.
Walker (W. L.), The True Christ, 31.
Warfielci (B. B.), The Power of God unto Salvation, 219.
Pulpit Encyclopaedia, i. 74 (Home).
An Unknown God.
And Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus, and said, Ye men of Athens, in all things I perceive that ye are somewhat superstitious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. What therefore ye wor- ship in ignorance, this set I forth unto you.— Acts xvii. 22, 23.
1. The story of St. Paul's visit to Athens in the seventeenth chapter of the Acts gives us the points of contact and of differ- ence between the philosophy of the ancient world and the gospel of Jesus Christ. The circumstances introduce the speech, whose brief outline of only about three hundred words is yet enough to show St. Paul's courage as a Christian and his skill as an orator. Adroit in conciliation, delicate in suggestion, thorough in its adaptation, simple and sweeping in its logic, issuing in that testi- mony of which he dare not be silent, and which is still the crux and the scandal of worldly wisdom — it is characteristic of St. Paul from first to last.
2. Silas and Timothy had been left behind at that Beroea where the Scriptures of the prophets had such honour, and, waiting for them all alone, Paul saw Athens where the only prophets are the poets. It was the city of Athene — goddess of skill and wisdom. All Hellenic art and story and worship and thought centred there. For what it was it stood peerless, supreme. Beautiful for situation, and adorned beyond the rivalry of all later ages, of vast intellectual prestige, of a never- satisfied mental curiosity — it was " the eye of Greece," and it is the wonder of time.