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ignorantly in unbelief, not knowing that he was the Holy One of Israel; I never read the pages of the New Testament, unfolding so richly the great ideas of the Old; I never saw the stupendous mass of evidence that eighteen centuries of history have piled around the cross; I never had a Christian mother to whisper of the babe of Bethlehem in my childhood, or a Christian father to tell me of the man of Calvary in riper years; had I enjoyed all these, I would long since have repented in dust and ashes." And the force of this plea is undeniable. Hence it may be that if the offer of mercy was to begin at Jerusalem, so also must the sentence of doom. It may be that as the long line of unhappy souls begins to file away from the left hand of the Judge, and take their places in the dark chambers of the damned, the same rule may be applied then that was applied at the opening of the gospel, "beginning at Jerusalem," and ending with those who have been nurtured in Christian homes, instructed in Christian churches, and yet who have refused themselves to be Christian disciples. It may be that some of these may be compelled to say to the guilty sons and daughters of Jerusalem, "Give me room to sink to a deeper, darker, hotter doom than even that beginning at Jerusalem; for as much higher as have been my privileges, so much deeper must be my doom."

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TENTH APPEARANCE-APOSTOLIC COMMISSION IN ACTS.

The gospel of the Holy Ghost. I. Waiting for the promise of the Father. Gorgeous dreams of the kingdom-Curiosity about the future-Almanac makers of prophecy-Waiting for the visionCreation groaning-How must we wait? II. The promise of the Father. Meaning of baptism-Mode of baptism-The dispensation of the Spirit-Christ's ascent the condition of the Spirit's descent-Intercession of the Holy Ghost, how it differs from that of Christ. III. Effects of the fulfilment of the promise. All Christians witnesses for Christ-Passive witnessing-Martyrs-Cecil and his mother, Addison-The unconscious witness.

"Eternal Spirit, we confess,

And sing the wonders of thy grace:
Thy power conveys our blessings down,
From God the Father, and the Son.

The troubled conscience knows thy voice,
Thy cheering words awake our joys,
Thy words allay the stormy wind,

And calm the surges of the mind."

"The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach. Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen to whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: and being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait

for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." Acts i. 1-8.

It

WE have now reached the last form in which the apostolic commission was issued by the Holy Spirit, and the last record that was made of this closing interview between Jesus and his disciples. We have seen how precisely each of the preceding forms of the commission was adapted to the purpose of the gospel in which it is found. It will, of course, not be supposed for a moment that it is designed to represent either as an inaccurate statement of the words of our Lord. has already been stated, that the probability is that our Lord spent all the night preceding the ascension with his disciples, and that he said very many things that have not been recorded, and said the same thing in different forms, leaving each writer to select that portion of his discourse that was most suitable to the object of his narrative. Hence there being a necessity, in the existing condition of the world, and in the great representative nations then most prominent, for different utterances of the same facts, the same necessity

required correspondingly different presentations of the apostolic commission. Matthew, in writing for the Hebrews, gave such portion of the discourse as was most suitable to the Hebrew mind. Mark, writing for the Romans, gave the form demanded by their peculiar condition. Luke, when writing a gospel, with a view to the wants of the Greeks, gave one form of the commission; but in writing the Acts, having a different object in view, he gives us other facts omitted in the former record. As this book was written more than thirty years after the facts occurred, and when the church was in a very different condition from that in which it was at first, we look with interest at the statement of facts which it was deemed necessary to place on record in this last narrative of the history. The Acts of the Apostles has been called the gospel of the Holy Ghost, from the prominence given to that Divine agent in the book. We find this very feature in the record of the commission. Whilst the portion of our Lord's words quoted by Luke, in his gospel, mentions the scriptures three times, we find here the same number of allusions to the Holy Ghost, thus giving us a clue to the great object of this fifth gospel. The design of the book, and of the form of the commission given in the book, is to present prominently the great fact that the New Testament dispensation is pre-eminently a dispensation of the Holy Ghost. We have also

the further facts not mentioned elsewhere, that our Lord tarried on earth forty days after his resurrection, holding many conversations with his disciples, and that the topic of them all was the kingdom of God, which he had come on earth to set up. There are several points here deserving our attention.

I. Waiting for the promise of the Father.

. Christ "commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me." Here is one of the most difficult duties to which a christian is ever summoned. To work for

the promise is easy, to wait for it is often very hard. There is a restless eagerness to enjoy what is hoped for, that makes us uneasy under any delay in the fulfilment of the promise.

This feeling we detect in the question of the disciples, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" It is plain from this question that there was not a little carnality still in their views. Trammelled by their traditional and national expectations, they could not fully comprehend, either the promise of the Father, or the nature of the kingdom of God. They expected evidently a temporal, rather than a spiritual kingdom. Burning with the glorious memories of the past, when the magnificence of David and Solomon shed on Israel a splendor that outshone

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