Acts 4:31 And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost… Is there nothing for men who are filled with the Spirit of God to do now? Are there no vile iniquities still going on buttressed up with immoral wealth and political chicaneries which may coexist very well indeed with all the pomposities of a fashionable religiousness; but to-day if there were but one stirring of the Spirit in our dead hearts would be spurned back to the hell from which they came? Look at the streets of London, shameless with prostitution; look at glaring and multiplied incentives to drunkenness which roll into the coffers of some one, a stream of wealth, tainted with the tears of women and the blood of men; look at the nefarious sweaters' dens, where greedy Jews and Christians make their vile money out of human misery. Look at the universal worldliness around us, look at the passionate mammon worship, at the reckless competition, at the desecration of Sundays in the mere voluptuous wantonness of pleasure. Lock at the dangerous increase of the guilty madness of betting and gambling in every school, office, street among rich and poor. Look at the rapid degradation of our journalism by the paltry flunkeyism of gossip and the evil malice of slander; look at the bad and false spirit of our so-called religious newspapers. O God, give us saints; O God, pour out the Spirit of Thy might. Were it but in the hearts of one or two to slay these dragons and not fear their poisonous breath! O Christ, send us but two or three heroes for this new Thermopylae. O Holy Ghost, fill one or two hearts with Thy rushing mighty wind, and mitre one or two brows with Thy Pentecostal flame! Priests we have in plenty, and Churchmen, but oh, send us men filled with the Holy Ghost! (Archdeacon Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness. |
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