The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 431

to time 110me testimony or their growing 1md growil'gly grateful appreciation or Cbriet and of bis truth, they then a.re proving their owu growth in likeness to him. They are ~nconscioualy giving the measure of how far the "day dawns" with them, and bow high. the." d~y-star arises in their hearts," or even how far they have got on that path which 1s like "the shining light, which shi.neth more and more unto the perfect day." Il MEN'S POTI'ING FBOM THEil THE W oBD OF Gon AB NOW GIVEN IN CBRIBT 18 DOING NOTHING LESS THAN PUTTING FROM THEM THB PROSPECT OP EVERLASTING LIFE. 1, 'l'he dogmatic tone of the apostle is to be noted. This is not the personal prerogative or Paul or of any one else; it is the claimed, asserted, demanded right of Christie.nity. Christianity gives its account of it, and a good and competent account. If this be not so, Chri■tianity must go. But if it be so, he must go who will not have its reign over him. 2. Momeutous and awful as is the issue to which Paul leaves now the refusing Jews, he lays the whole responsibility of it upon them. They were "filled with envy," they" spake against the things which were spoken by Paul," they "con- tradicted and blasphemed," they" put from" them the" Word of God;" and Paul rules that theini is the undivided folly of forfeiting "everlasting life," as though they iseriously "judged themselves unworthy of it." Ill. TIIE lilMPLEST FACTS OF SOME SOBTS OP BUllAN OONDUCT, WHEN TRANSLATED Th"TO WORDS, SOUND LIKE THE PUREST, MOST UNDISGUISED BATIBE. Nothing could be further lrom the pride and presumption of a Jew, of the type of those who were now before Paul, the.n to think himself "unworthy of everlasting life," or indeed of e.ny other thing whatsoever, either great or good, which could be had. Yet nothing could be truer than that his conduct amounted to that, ran a terrible risk of ending in it, and, unrepented, unaltered., could in fact end in nothing else. For it may be stated thns-that (1) the message of Christ, (2) the credentials of every kind of Christ, and (3) the deep, incontestable, universal needs of the heart and life of man, are such that, whether a man be Jew or Gentile, so only be be made fairly acquainted with Jesus and " the Word of God " in him, he is "inexcusable" if he " put these away from" him. Nothing, it might be supposed, could rationally (though then not rightly) explain the conduct except it were the profoundest humility of a publican of the publicans, But this, we know, would forget the prayer of the publican, though it might commemorate his deepest humiliation of self-reproach and sense of "unworthiness." Yet is this too sadly often found the case with men in matters of religioIL Without humility, they pursue a line of conduct which only the extreme of self-reproach could rationally and temporarily account for. Othe! reason, indeed, in very truth there may be, must be -unutterable folly, blindest infatuation, amazing recklessness, and uncalculating force of passion and envy, and withal guilt's own chosen particular type of hardness; thae or their like must at the last be found answerable. But when they are sum- moned for their last answer, this will be the irony of their situation, that, furthest removed c,f all from pure and modest and self-upbraiding humility, they CQtJ,nterfeited it, and, in the name of that counterfeit, "would not come to Jesus that they might have life" everlasting. An inspired apostle gave this unexpected interpretation of the state of things in the instance before us; how many more such, alas I will " the day reveal"? -B. Vel"L 42-52.-The clash o/ two to0rld1 in <Jhrist, It may certainly be uid that the Jews had long been a world by themselves. In one fashion this had been the ordaining of Heaven itself, though they had wrested the true idea of things to a false. And in matter of fact, tbe whole of the rest of the earth had been another world. It was but too true now that places were to change, and, while the lofty fell, the lowly were exalted. The climax was scarcely reached as yet chronologically, but tbe passage of the history before us may most justly be looked at as setting forth very strikingly the climax in its nature. N otie&- L THE OPENING SIGIIB. The place ia the synagogue, the place of the Jew. The service is on the sabbath, the service and the sabbath both of the Jew, The congrega- tion is in the first place almost exclusively the congregation of the Jew and of thol!e who bad now 10me time been allied to him as proselytes. These had heard read the Law awi tbe prophets, and had, in addition, heard thereupon exposition and exholtatioa, CR, XIII. 1-52.] THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 429