Acts 4:16 Saying, What shall we do to these men?… Few things are more striking than the continuance and growth of Christianity; first, under the circumstances of difficulty and persecution; and next, under the conditions of maintenance to which it is restricted, viz., moral persuasion and impression. The Church is its own sufficient witness. It is of God, because it has so triumphed. The conditions under which its most signal triumphs have been won have been far removed from any that human sagacity could have devised. How often the things that threatened its destruction have proved the signal means of its salvation! The Jews prevail upon Pilate to crucify Jesus; that very death accomplishes His redeeming purposes. The Sanhedrin persecute the little Church, and break it up; but it simply scattered coals of living fire, which ignited everything they touched. So it has been a thousand times since. Tempests of persecuting passion have only carried in every direction the pollen of the Christian flower, which has fructified and brought forth a hundred-fold. Precisely this result was produced by this persecution: unwittingly it furnished occasion for one of the most signal triumphs of early Christianity. The whole issue turned upon the character of the alleged miracle, and upon the power whereby it was wrought. If it could be established that such a miracle had been wrought in the name and by the power of Jesus, the Christian doctrine was indubitably attested. The question therefore really was the relation of miracles to Christianity, the question that scepticism is discussing still. Only the Sanhedrin never thought of taking the ground of modern scepticism, which, not so closely confronted by contemporary fact, affirms that miracle is impossible. Their insinuation was the old Pharisaic blasphemy, "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils." It is not always deficiency of evidence that causes men to reject Christianity. I. THE HEALING OF THIS CRIPPLE IS A STRIKING ILLUSTRATION OF THE PECULIAR BENEVOLENCE AND GRACE OF CHRISTIANITY. Amid thousands who needed healing this beggar was the selected object. Lordly priests and wealthy nobles crowded the temple, some probably victims of painful disease, but to none of them were the apostles sent. It was surely in purposed and beautiful harmony with the character of the gospel that neither our Lord nor His apostles sought for illustrious patients. They did not, of course, exclude the rich. Our Lord gladly went to the house of Jairus, and to that of the centurion. To the poor, characteristically, the gospel was preached. They especially awakened the Master's compassion, because of their greater misery. There is a sense in which special solicitudes of the Christian worker will gather round the rich, whose peculiar spiritual peril the Master indicated when He said, "How hardly shall they that have riches enter the kingdom of heaven!" It is not easy to make Dives conscious of his spiritual poverty. Men who receive their "good things" in this life are in danger of neglecting the life hereafter. But it is the distinctive grace of Christ's gospel that to the very poorest its blessings may come. It saves the respectable Pharisee, but it has its greatest triumph and joy in saving the outcast publican. It comes to "seek and to save the lost"; to "call, not the righteous, but sinners to repentance." Its characteristic agencies are reformatories and ragged schools, theatre preachings and midnight meetings, city missions and missions to the heathen. When do its workers seek the palaces of nobles, or a place among the rich? Its glory is to fill its churches with "healed men." II. THE PROMPTINGS OF THE HEALED MAN'S GRATITUDE. 1. Its piety. (1) His first movement was into the temple. The first use of his recovered limbs was in God's praise. The healing of his body had touched deep springs of religious feeling. Perhaps his disability had long taught him to pray. Such is often the severe yet gracious lesson of affliction. The rarer thing is that his healing prompted him to praise. Of the ten lepers cleansed, only one returned to give God thanks. (2) All great experiences of life appeal to religious emotions: in great sorrows we are passionate in prayer, in great joys rapturous in praise; only the religious feeling excited is often as transient as it is fervent. Whether or not this was so with this recovered cripple we are not told. But his fervour, and the courage with which he took his stand by the criminated apostles, .are strong presumption of a radical and permanent piety. (3) Whatever the instrument of our blessing, it is God who makes it efficient. He therefore claims our supreme acknowledgment. If, therefore, I have received temporal healing, let me first pay to Him the "vows which I made when I was in trouble." If my soul has been healed, let me "enter His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise." What emotion can be so strong, what joy so exquisite, as those of the man who for the first time after his healing enters God's house? 2. Its human fidelity. (1) He "held Peter and John " in a grateful embrace. Next to him who saves us our gratitude is due to him who leads us to the Saviour. (2) Thankful to his benefactors, the healed man stood by them when they were apprehended by the Sanhedrin; glad to share their reproach and peril. And poor and unworthy will be our thankfulness if, when Christ is rejected or His servants are scorned, we slink away in shame or fear. III. IN THIS PERILOUS CRISIS OF THE INFANT CHURCH IT WAS SAVED BY THE PRESENCE AND TESTIMONY OF THIS HEALED CRIPPLE. What could these few peasants and fishermen have done against the might and hostility of the Sanhedrin? If, as is sometimes affirmed, Christianity be only human, the miracle of its establishment and propagation by such apostles, and under such circumstances, is surely as great as the miracle of the Incarnation. Five thousand converts within a few days, as the result of simple religious teaching, are surely as difficult to credit as the healing of the lame man. It was not the first time that Peter had stood before Annas and Caiaphas, who would exult in having in their hands again the leaders of the sect. What could be easier than to crush this accursed thing? The difficulty lay in certain incorrigible facts. The vitality of this pestilent heresy was derived from these facts. First, there were the notorious miracles which Christ Himself had wrought, crowned by His own indubitable resurrection. And now His followers seem to be working similar marvels. A fact such as this was worth a thousand arguments. It utterly baffled the Sanhedrim It compelled them to admit the miracle, and, with it, its undeniable inferences. The healed man, not the eloquence of its apostles, saved the infant Church. Such has often been the vindication of the Church; not the learning of its doctors, or the arguments of its apologists, but the spiritual life of some humble, simple-hearted disciple, who has justified its work by himself demonstrating its healing power. (H. Allon, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Saying, What shall we do to these men? for that indeed a notable miracle hath been done by them is manifest to all them that dwell in Jerusalem; and we cannot deny it. |
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