The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 313

man and of the state of man and of the future for man. And aIJ other knowledge he feels to be necessarily subordinate to this. 2. Perfect Example. No sculptured model so perfect for example as the delineated character, the written life of Jesus, the impress that is made on the attentive observer of his work and word and manner. Here is the sculptor seen, indeed, and his sculpture worth the studying. And Christ's true con- vert will bo thiR kind of true student of him also, He will well know the place at his feet, and his own right attitude as he sits there watching. 3. MaRter and Lord. He will feel that his Btrength and devotion belong to him. " What has he done for me 1 and what for him shall I not do P" 4. One alone Saviowr. Whatever his trust or hope for his own future life and for his soul may once have been, he finds all now in "Jesus only." And if he were conscious of, careful for none at all before, now how earnestly he clings to Jesus, because of this-" Saviour" his dearest name," mighty to save " his dearest attraction I Oh, with what passionate adoration of gratitude and of love did Paul sing, and since him unnumbered millions of others have sung it," My dear Redeemer and my Lord" I Thus Saul, in his first allegiance to Jesus, calls him "Lord," and asks him nothing else but as to what are his instructions: "What wilt thou have me to do?" III. THE ALTERED PBAOTICAL LIFE. Conversion means a changed heart, changed thoughts, changed feeling, a changed air and light. But it means nothing if it do not mean also a genuinely, practically changed career. No sublime enjoyment, no rich experience, no flight of sanctified imagination, no foretaste in saintly, heavenly com- munings with unseen realities, of " the joys" that are to come, shall satisfy Jesus, nor can satisfy Scripture's conception and representation of the convert of Christ. His life must be "Christ;" and he must awa~t death to know his full "gain." His life must be a witness to Christ, albeit it be first strong witness against his old past self, and ever a quiet rebuke of those who live not after the same rule. The amazement and the solemn dread of those minutes of blindness and strongest excitement, when Saul lay on the earth, and was already summoned as it were to the bar of his Maker, did not prevent him, as a true convert and as type of a true convert, asking for his practical work. "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" In our ignorance, perhaps we should, a priori, have thought a more reasonable question, o. more modest question, a more reverent question, might have been, "Lord, where wilt thou have me to go "-go hide myself? "Where wilt thou have me go," that I may shed bitter tears and do penance for the past. "Where wilt thou have me go," that I may pass through the fires of some purgatory, and be proved by some solemn ordeal ? But no, the question cannot be mistaken, misreported, or altered. It is, " What wilt thou have me to do ? " And Jesus tells him, and does not say now, "This is the work of God, that you believe on me," He tells him, and it proves very shortly, how really he had" to do," to "spend and be spent," " to labour more abundantly than they all," and to prove his conversion by his changed life and its fruits. For vain, unspeakably vain, the profession of a. changed heart and the hopes of Christ and of heaven, without the proof that lies in the changed life.-B. '· Ver. 9.-The sequestrated soul, In the wonders of the conversion of Saul we are greatly impressed with the close regard paid to the needs of human nature. It is not all miracle, nor must it be so viewed. Amazing is the grace of what cannot be oon- strued as anything less than superhuman intervention, An adoring surprise is cer- tainly not diminished when we notice how that intervention condescends so soon, so readily, to make itself at home with the harmonies of human natnre. It does not affect to disdain them, nor does it dispense with them, because of the majesty of its own omnipotence, but rather emphatically "condescends to the lo.w estate of men." For the experience of intense excitement through which Saul had just passed is sure, upon the reckonings of human nature by itself, to be decisive of his future, If it do not make him, it will most surely undo him for ever. He may " be exalted above measure " or he may be depressed "above measure," Either of these two extremes is a constant result in human life of whatever mio-ht 0 come nearest to such excitement and impres- sion as those here described. In the presence of a position so critical, it does not follow that nature is entirely helpless nor that miracles must be implored. In succeeding degrees repose, silence, even darkness will be prescribed, and we shall be told ur,erringly  310 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLEa [cu, a, 1-48.