The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 1 — Section 437

poaibly be limited in lte appliMtion to D11vid himeelf? Our text le the overwhelming amwer: " D11vid, 11fter he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on lleep, and "''.e.s laid unto his fathere, and saw corruption." The words could only bo true o'. Messiah.. They were true of Jesus of Nazareth. The seal of his Messiahship wae his resurrection. We fix attention now on the description given of David as n man who "eerved his own generation." Dean Plumptro says, "'!'here is, perhaps, a 111ggeeted contrast between the limits within which the work of service to mankind d~ne by any mere man, however great and powerful, is necessarily confined, 11nd tho wide, far-reaching, endless ministry to the whole hum11n family which belongs to the Son of man." If God is pleased t-0 spare a man so long as to reach the fulness of old age, that man really lives through nearly three generations ; 11ud yet it is only upon one of them that even he can exert an active influence. The first generation moulds him, with its various educational forces. The second generation he may distinctly impress with his own individuality ; of it he may become one of the potent forces. On the third he can only exert a passive influence; he is, for the most part, out of eympat'hy with it, and he presently finds that he had better step aside, and let tho current of life and thought pass on. No matter how long we may live, no one of us ca.n influence more than just our one generation of thirty years or more. Some men serve their generation by being before it, and giving expression in it to the thoughts and truths and sentiments which properly belong to the age that is yet to be. Such men do a great work by anticipating the coming time and preventing the transitions and changes from becoming too abrupt. Such men must accept the peril of being misunderstood, and called hard names until they die, and the new generation recog- nizes in them its heroes, forerunners, and apostles. Some men belong precisely to their own generation : they are exactly adapted to it; they never get beyond it ; they are born into its thought and feeling; they live in it, work for it, worthily express it, and pass away with it; usually leaving no name only the good fruitage and the silent seeding of their good works. These are the thousands of the unknown ones, but they are the "salt of the earth." And some men seem to be always in the past generation. Their thoughts and feelings all belong to times past and gone. A queer, old-fashioned life they live amongst us, and their very talk sounds strange, And yet these links we need, lest, in the pride of our present attainments, we should try to break the bonds of the holy and the good that have gone on before us. No generation dares forget the past out of which it has come. But no generation can afford to keep only a downward and • backward look; it must lift up its head, peer away yonder, and hail the "good time ioming." We may all serve our generation in three ways. L WE llAY WITNESS FOB Gon IN IT. Every generation wants men and women ,;ho really believe in God, and make it plain to everybody that they do believe in him. ii one form or in another, the belief in the living God is put in peril in each succeeding generation. Sometimes the unbelief is intellectual, and sometimes it is practical; but every generation produces its "fools " and its " wicked," who secretly or openly say, • There is no God." Then we may minister to our generation by a clear and constant witness to the living God; not 88 by our word only, but by the impression we make on men that we are a.ctually living under the " great Taskmaster's eye ; " by the signs we show that all our life is spent in his fear ; and by the tone of all our thought, relation- ship, and duty, which plainly indicates the abiding sense of his presence. Thus David eerved his generation, bringing the sense of God to men whenever he came into relations ivith them ; and it is the honour of Mohammed that he laid this down 88 the very foundation of rsla.mism, " There is no God but God." IL WE IUY SERVE OlJB OWN GENERATION BY BEING OUB BEST POSSIBLE IN IT. For every generation needs, in all its spheres, such models and examples as may be to it a constant inspiration. And exactly what we all may do, wherever our lot is cast, is this -keep the moral standard up, and raise the moral standard higher. And this can only be done by lives, by examples, by personal character. What we are may be the leavening force of our gen.iratlon in our sphere. But it would seem that, in this respect, David l&dly failed. We cannot say that he served his generation by being the best possible tn it. And yet, maybe, if we rightly knew his age, we might come to feel that he did Even taking into account his grievous fall, the ~in current of his life was, to his people, • high and inspiring example; a strea!D of mflueuce that made for righteous- OH, XIII, 1-52,] 'l'HE AO'l'S Ob' 'l'HE APOSTLES.