The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 2 — Section 81

own ~ing feeling._ A man _is not always dispos~ for pri~ate prayer or publio worship, but the habit keeps him related to these thmgs, and it ie often found thnt while engaged in them, the needed mood of feeling will come. Custom only may tak~ us to worship, but eye and heart may be opened ,vhen we are there. 2. They help !um to overcome adverse circumste.noes. Hindrances of family or business life seriously affect the man who has no religious habits. They fe.il to hurt the man who has his life well ordered, and his regular times and we.ye. The ha.bits soon get recognized and the incidents of lire take shape so as to fit in with them.-R. T, ' Ver. 3.-The three points of Pauline preaching. In ver. 18 the point of St. Paul's te:1ching to the Gentiles is briefly gi,·en, and it is seen that he had but one messaae which he endeavoured to ndapt to his mrying audiences. To the Gentiles he preached "Jesus and the resurrection;" to the Jews he preached that" Obrist must needs have suffered, and risen again from the de.-id; and that Jesus is the Christ." It may be noticed that to a J ewitib audience St. Paul could make a twofold appeal: (1) to Old Testament Scripture; and (2) to the establ~shed facts connected with the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord. To the Gentiles he could make no appeals to Scripture testimony, seeing that they had no written revelation; but even to them St. Paul could make a twofold appeal: (1) to the natural sense of religion, of which their idolatries gave witne~s; and (2) to the circle of recognized facts connected with the manifestation of Christ in the lletib. Still our appeal to men is based on (1) the religious nature• (2) the older revelation; (3) the historical facts of Christ's life. St. Paul "preached the gospel as a herald. Yes, but he preached it also by long arguments, intended and constructed to produce faith or persuasion concerning Christ. Indeed, the Greek word originally means to carry on an argument by way of dialogue; question by the hearer, answer by the preacher, according to his light. That was the real apostolic method of serving Christ-a very eager, earnest, inevitable method. To preach Christ is to 'reason out of the Scriptures' and, in a secondary degree, out of the great book of human life and experience, and also out of the great book of material nature; but in any case it is to' reason,' to lay out, the matter as it seems to ourselves-to press it home upon :ill whom it concerns; to remonstrate, expostulate, entreat, and then to leave the isst1t• with God." Fix attention on St; Paul's three points. L M:~~,11 AH MUST SUFFER. Compare our Lord's teaching to the two disciples on the way to bmmaus (Luke :uiv. 25, 26). Thill suffering of their expected Messiah was the poi!!t uf Old Testament teaching which the Jews missed or resisted. It is in the old Seri J!tures, in psalm BD.d prophecy, plainly enough ; but the conception of the Messiah !l.S a national Deliverer and conquering King had so possessed the minds of the peopltc that the prophetic figures of suffering were willingly turned aside, refe1Ted to some 1Jther individual, or assumed to have been exhausted in the troubles of the writers. Yet the first promise made to men after the Fall gives hint of redemption by sufferi:ug (!188 especially Ps. mi.; Isa. liii; and the Book of Lamentations). Explain the intl••,:·we which the writings of Daniel and the conflicts of the Maccabean princes had Upl'II t.he national sentiment. And yet in this necessity for Messiah's sufferings is declared t:ie distinction between a temporal and a spiritual Savioui:'. Christ's weapons are not carnal. Of moral weapons none are mightier than suffering, and few can be used without involving suffering. The necessity for Christ's suffering may be shown (1) in his humiliation to man's nature; (2) in his sympathy with man's disabilities; (3) in his ooaring of mall's burden. There was both suffering of fe.eling and suffering of circumstance,. IL MEssuB JroST BISE. Of this the older Scriptures give witness. The kind of passages which the apostles took to prove this position a.re found in St. Peter's first eermons; and the necessity may be shown (1) in that the acceptance by God of his life and work on earth must in some way be attested, and (2) in that we must have good ground of persuasion that Christ is alive and able to continue the good work which he has begun on earth. A Saviour for men who was held fBBt in the death-grip plainly could not deliver man from death, the worst of his foes. Buch a seeming Saviour could not win our conficience, for it would appear to us that he was defeated at last. And, besid.ea, we cannot trust a thing, a 1JJO'l'k; we mtlSt trust a person who has worked and cu. work. and therefore MeBBiah muet riee from the dead and be alive for evermore, OD, XTD. 1--Bf,] 'l'HE AOTS OF THE APOSTLES. 83