Acts ii. 32, 33. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore, being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye noiv see and hear.
MARVELLOUS, beyond conception, was the miracle wrought on the day of Pentecost ; when a company of illiterate fishermen were enabled, in one moment, to speak a great diversity of languages, with as much ease and fluency and propriety as their own native tongue. Some, who were of a more than ordi- nary profane character, when they heard foreigners of different nations addressed in languages which they themselves could not understand, said, that the Apostles were drunk with new wine. But the Apostle Peter, repelling the accusation as both unmerited and absurd, shewed that this very miracle had been fore- told, as ordained to mark the days of the Messiah, and as intended to introduce that new dispensation to which the descendants of Abraham had looked forward for two thousand years. That we may see the full scope of his argument, I will shew,
I. In what light we should view the out-pouring of the Holy Spirit —
This stupendous miracle had an especial respect to the Lord Jesus Christ,
1. As an evidence of his mission — [It had been foretold by the Prophet Joel, whose words are cited by the Apostle Peter, and declared to have been accomplished in that event'"1. The testimony of the Apostles, relative to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, on which all his claims to the Messiahship were founded, might be supposed to have been the result of a deep-laid plot : but, in the mira- culous powers imparted, there could be no conspiracy ; since persons of all the different nations then present at Jerusalem could not but attest the truth of the miracle then wrought. Of this the most inveterate enemies were made the judges: and
a Compare Joel ii. 28 — 32. with Acts ii. 10 — 21.