The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 400

import&nt to preserve. And yet, wben God would secure the deliverance or his imperilled ~ervants, he did not always employ miraculous agencies. Paul o.nd Silas were imprisoned at Philippi, but they were rescued by natural means; an earthquake proved effective to the loosening of their bonds, and the jolting open of the prison doors. There must have been some special reasons for the miraculous form in which St. Peter s deliverance was effected. Two things require attention, as introductory to this subject. l. '.l'he nature of New Testament miracles, and their particull\r mission to the age in which they were wrought. 2. The ideas of angelic ministry which had passed over to the apostles from Judaic associations. The intervention of angels had occurred again and again in the earlier history, and such an event as St. Petor's rescue would not start doubts in a Jewish mind. God's revelations to men," in sundry ways and in divers ~anners," were better apprehended by Jews then than by Christians now. From this rnc1dent we may be led to consider- I. THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE MIRACULOUS. Here should be given an historical review of Divine interventions, with some classification of their character and of the circum- stances under which the miracles were wrought. It will be found that there are cases in which (1) natural agencies sufficed, under the ordering of Divine providence, to remove the difficulty; (2) in which miraculous intervention did not come when we might reasonably have expected; (3) and in which miraculous agencies were use.l when we did not expect them. These points may be illustrated to show that the employment of the miraculous is (a) a matter of Divine sovereignty, and never offered in response to any compulsion of man or of circumstances; and (b) that it is therefore still a Divine reserve, a.nd we dare not affirm that the age of miracles is past, because the employment of them is to be regarded as entirely dependent on the Divine judgment and will; and as that will acts upon considerations of the higher and spiritual well-being of man, it may quite conceivably be that in some of man's moral states the miraculous may be the most efficient moral force. It is true that miracles may not be wisely employed in a characteristically scientific a.ge snch as ours may be called ; but the scientific is only a passing feature, and from it there may conceivably come a rebound to a charac- teristically imaginative, or as some might call it supe1·stitious, age, to which miracle might again make efficient appeal. The incident of St. Peter's release is a peculiar case of employment of the miraculous-peculiar in that (1) it differs materially from all the other apostolic miracles; and (2) in that it carries the style of Old Testament miracles over into the New, and is to be classed with the deliverance of the three Hebrew youths from the furnace, and of Daniel from the lions. 1L THE LIMITATIONS OF THE llfIIIACULOUS. These are even more striking than the uses. In the case of our Lord's miracles the general principle of the limitation is indi- cated. Miracles he never wrought for the supply of his own needs, only for the exertion of a gracious moral inftuence on others. These two limitations may be illustrated. 1. A miracle is never wrought unless it can be made the enforcement or illustration of some moral truth. 2. A miracle is never wrought unless those in whose behalf it is wrought are in a duly receptive state of mind and feeling, and so can be benefited by the miracle. It does not affect this principle of limitation that some of those who are related to a miracle may be rather hardened by it than taught and blessed. St. Peter .ras not miraculously delivered for his own sake, but for the sake of the confidence which the praying Church might gain from such a proof of the Di vine defence a.nd care. IIL THE .ADAPTATIONS OF THE MIRACULOUS. I. To the particular occasion. 2. 'l'o tlie tone and sentiment of the age. 3. 'l'o the Divine dispensation, with which it has to be in harmony. 4. To the precise underlying purpose for the sake of which it is wrought. On these principles we may e".en discern miraculous workin_gs_ in these onr times, though they take forms of adaptation to our thought and assoc1at1ons, and are· uot after the precise Old Testament or New Testament patterns. Vve look for direct Divine acrencies in the moral and spiritual rather than in the physical and material world. IV. T~ RESULTS .ATTAINED BY THE MIBACULOUS. How far it can be used as evi- denGe or proof needs to be carefully considered. Wiser men only use miracles as auxiliary evidence of the truth of Christianity. And for this use the character of tho miracle raLher than the power in the miracle are of chief importance. In connection with our text we find one result on which it may be profitable to dwell in concluHion. The Divi.D.e rescue of St. Peter brought w the praying and persecuted Church a. sense of  011, Xtr. 1-26,] THE A(Y.['S OF THE APOSTLES. 397