The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 2 — Section 326

Vers. 1-6.-.A strong family likeness. This short episode is, in its proportion, as rcfre11hing to the reader as to those who played the actual part in it. It is the oasis of narrati ,·e. It reads like a brief parable of the human heart. Or we may be impressed by it, as by some portrait, which present.s to our view features with which we seem to be very familiar, and half hiding, half revealing a likeness to some one well known. They are the features that " half concea.l and half reveal " the likeness of the human he-art. And throughout the family of human heart, very strong indeed is the family likeness, above wba.t can be found anywhere else. Notice these features, so characteristio of it. I. ITB KINDNESS. 1. The heart loves kindness-to receive it. 2. The heart loves kindness-to do it. Both of these are deep facts of the heart, and speak not obscurely him who made it. 3. The kindness that is in the heart is touched towards bodily want, cold, hunger, thirst, shelterless exposure ; and this tells the tale of all the rest (Matt. x.,;:v. 35-45). 4. The kindness of the heart contravenes in human life the bare action of the principle of natural selection; it tempers it with irrestibly modifying and irre- sistibly elevating moral influences; it determines and regulates in a way all its own "the survival of the fittest," and it is the thing on earth likest what is habitual in heaven I 5. The kindness of the human heart is found everywhere, and in every age of the world. IL ITS BUPEBBTITION. 1. The superstition that is so often betrayed by the human heart is an unerring sign of the sense of God and the instinct of the infinite present in it. 2. It means that sense unguided, that instinct baffled. 3. It evidences deep conviction of moral distinctions inside man, and of presiding moral judgments outside men, and authoritative over them, all unfed as these may be from truth's own springs, and unpointed to their infinitely worthy objects. 4. It is e. constant rehearsal of judgment to come. IIL 1TB llWil"l'NES8 TO TUBN. Hence come (1) the worse uses of such versatility and such swiftness, fickleness, and caprice, and waywardness, and love of mere variety ; but (2) the better IlBEI!, readiness to forgive, swiftness to run and even meet the returning prodigal; (3) the thoroughness of coutrition and conversion, that need but a moment- like those of Paul himself; and ( 4) the power to recover, after sorest stricken griefs, and most fearful storms of sorrow or of passion. IV. 1TB ADDICTEDNESs TO EXTREMES. The people cf Melita began with simplest, most unaffected )tindness. They saw no instructing providence, bnt when the occasion came B11perstition filled their heart, and Paul is "no doubt a murderer, whom vengeance suffereth not to live, though he hath escaped the sea." This is their short and snmmary theology. But it is not altogether so stiff and unopen to conviction. They are changed to the opposite pole when they find, "after a great while," i.e. what seemed a great while for eyea fixed in one direction, but which was indeed a very little while, that vengeance does not make an end to the life of Paul. And from a pursned murderer, they exalt him to the skies of the gods I Happy if the history of every erring heart had as much of the kindnel!S u was here, and no more of the error and the mischief and the disaster tlie.n were here. Kindness began the scene, and, when fear clouded it over awhile, the last "change of mind " wu not from better to worse, but from worse to better. Yet 11till how mournfully plain it is that nature's light alone, leaves the barbarian/ For so he must be ca.lled justly who exalts the child of God into a god himaelf.-B. Vere. 7-10.-A 'Y? of Ike beneficent action of Ghristiani,V. Christian truth embodied in Christian men had not long been in an island to which it was quite strange orr. xxvm. 1-31.] THE ACTS OF TIIE APOSTLF.S. 337