The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 309

not 0110 to bo coiled his "Lc-rd" or "Lord" at all. 1. He had put his own idea and his own impression on Christ; but not the righe ones, and of the fr,ht he was irnorant and destitute. How many do this I No name, perhaps, better known to the~ than the Name of Jesus, no nature less known or more mistaken. It is the darkness which helo11gs (1! to nat~re; (2) to wilful neglect and habi_t. 2. Th~ very wrongness of those ideas 11nd. 1mpress10ns were the measure of the pers1stency with which they were held and the intemperateness with which they were expressed, Paul afterwards tells us this "I verily thought with myself that I ought to do many thinas contrary to the Name of Jesus of Nazareth," and he developed his "thought" into the acts of violent persecution. But when Saul utters the cry of the text it is because he is just becinnin" the escape-the escape of his life, the escape/or his life-from that long dark ~istake° th:i.t native delusion and ignorance. And afterwards he does not excuse his wron~ "thought," but condemns himself with deepest contrition as "the chief of sinners.'.?. Saul was utterly in the wrong before his conversion; and is not every one else utterly in the wrong until his conversion? What a solemn responsibility this one thing is in life, to make up the mind how to think, to speak, to act towards Christ I !L IN THIS QUESTION IS FOUND THE EVIDENCE OF THE AWAKENING OF A NEW A!m KEEN DESillE. 1. Past darkness and mistake (specially in proportion to its moral blamableness), not only may incur the deep-settled habit, but they generally do so. '!'hey strangle, till they kill, anything like a natural healthy desire for real light, real knowledge, They seem to be able to go to the length of destroying the power for all further use on earth. Then what a power it must be that is needed to speak life, strength, use again into that palsy I 2. The one unvarying testimony of Scripture witnesses to one great silent Power, alone able "to create a clean heart, and to renew e. right spirit" within man. It is that great Power which wakens again in the deep disused of human nature the keen desire to know, the relish of true knowledge, the thirst for light and love and the liberty of Christ. As on that day so eventful Saul journeyed in hot haste over the hot sands to Damascus, but with raging heart hottest of all, a new future is opening for him, for a new future is opening in him, ere yet the echoes of his brief question die on the air. When in the intolerable blaze of that bright light that passed the brilliance of the noonday sun he fell to the earth, and when the heavenly voice of the risen One twice summoned him, "calling him by his name," it may well be that, if there were anything to waken after too long sleep confessed, it now should " hear and live." And it was so. Some power has reached and touched the vital germ within, yet unextinct, and it owns to the :sudden impulse. There is no more genuine evidence of God's mighty Spirit being savingly at work than when every hindrance, every excuse, e1Jery delay, falls back, and you press on simply to ask for Christ. Then human nature's want, sin, misery, are a1Tived at the door of Heaven's mfinite wealth, happiness, willingness. Keen is the force of human appetite and keener the edge of passion; keen are our worldly desires and keener our mad wrath; but keenest of all and ever conquering is the force of the desire to know Christ, when it is the Spirit of God who puts it into the heart and kindles its flame. And does not this sample-conversion history guide us most closely to see what are the Spirit's real ways with our natures, which need first obstructions removed, and thereupon force and life restored? The treatment shall be such as reveals to him who experiences it at one glance the world of darkness and error and sin that has been so long within, but close upon that tells him of new, strange, and blessed life astir within also. Ill. IN TBIB QUESTION IS DIBCEUNIBLE THE HUJIIDLED AND ALARMED BELl" TURNING BOUND AND BECOMING REALLY READY TO EXERCISE A Slll[pLE, DEEP TBUST. How many "hope" they e.re ready, "think" they are ready, have some sort e.nd some a.mount of "wish" to be ready, but of whom e.11 the truth is, they are not really ready to trust Christ I They are not really rea1ly to cast themselves on mercy, nor to acknowledge that "this is the work they have to do," namely, "to believe on him whom God bath sent." They a.re not yet really ready to b~lieve thot sal_v~ti~n is to be h~ by lruat and not by any other way ; by trust in Chr1St, and t~ust ilhm1t_able. Yet 19 there _nc surer, no safer article of e.ll our faith. And healthy life and frwt a.re only where faith is rooted in Christ and root to finest tendril e.nd branch to lillest twig do all derive their now·ishment' and their sap from him. So Saul's question and the sharp, direct method of it signify then, evident_\y enough, both the hopeful and the trustful state into ~ ~  "°6 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. [cs. I.L 1-'8,