Acts 24:1-9

Chapter 87

Prayer

Almighty God, because of thy good hand upon us we find ourselves in the house of prayer, and in the place of Christian home. Thou hast brought our wandering feet into the secure place; we are no longer out upon the cold rocks seeking rest and finding none: we are in our Father's house, bright with his mercy, warm with his love, strong with his almightiness. So will we sing a new song unto thee, and a loud psalm, and will not spare our voices in the cry which expresses the praise of our hearts. Thou hast done great things for us, whereof we are glad. Thou hast planted flowers in places in which we thought no beauty could grow; thou hast supplied us with water in the land of thirst; thou hast made our bed in our affliction; thou hast turned our loss into gain; and when we have said, in want of faith which was well-nigh despair, "All these things are against me," thou hast turned them round and made them friends of ourselves, so that the things which had happened unto us of a perverse and trying kind have turned out rather to the furtherance of the Gospel in our hearts. The year which we hailed with joy is now passing silently and gloomily away. It lingers like a friend loath to go still its last few hours are round about us waiting for some good inscription, for some holy vow, for some new confession, for some bolder prayer. Is there not yet time for victory? Shall the battle of the year close in our defeat? or shall we not, by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, stand up at the last and be more than conquerors through him who loved us? Wilt thou work this miracle in our life? Wilt thou, ere the hours quite go, show us the way of salvation and lead us into the temple of thy peace? That we can pray is truly not the least of thy miracles. That we have any desire rising upwards to the light of heaven is truly the gift and the doing of God. So will we hope in thee evermore. Our dying breath may be a prayer; our last look may be towards the places of the stars, and far away beyond their dim shining into the infinite light. This is our hope in Christ; this is the victory of faith. Lord, give us. through the Cross, the mystery and the jewel of thine own peace. Great peace have they that love thy law: they have peace that passeth understanding. Lord, grant us thy peace. May the Son of peace dwell in us; may we know the meaning of reconciliation through the blood of the Cross and so know it as to be unable to explain it in words which would but mock the mystery. Help us to lean upon thee, to cling to thee, to rest in thee, to have no will of pur own, but to wish to be what thou wouldst have us be, amid all the temptings of time and all the strain and trial of changing life. Thou hast been with us in the wilderness and on the tea. and in the garden of flowers and on the hills of frankincense. Thou wilt not disappoint us now; thou wilt never leave us or forsake us, for thou lovest us as we cannot love thee. The love is all on thy side; therefore are we safe. The love is not the flicker of our affection, but the eternal sacrifice of thine own. We love thee because thou didst first love us wondrous love! the love unto death, having in it the mystery of blood, the gift of the heart. We cannot follow it: it is like thyself. And now let the mystery of thy grace appear unto us more clearly than ever. In its inspiration we shall encounter the year that is just coming. No terror shall that year bring with it if our hearts are fortified with thy grace; it shall be our year the year of jubilee and victory upon victory; of such exaltation of the soul in Christ as shall turn the old earth into new heavens. The Lord withhold not from us the blessing without which the year is a great void. Comfort thy people with heavenly solaces; and when the banner dips in the mire and is bedraggled there, and they are ashamed of it because they have let it fall, give them lifting up of heart and renewal of courage, and may they shake out the banner in the wind and dry it in the sun of thy grace. The Lord rebuild our house for us every year; the Lord light the fire in the house every morning; the Lord see to it that we have bread enough; the Lord clothe us with garments sufficient for us; the Lord be our Servant because he is our Sovereign, and the Lord be unto us all we need because he is the Infinite. We gather at the Cross; we touch the holy tree; we look, but speak not, for our hearts are too full for speech. We know the meaning of thy languid eye, thou dying One; we know the meaning of the flowing blood, thou Priest, thou Victim. We will not speak we will look and touch and wait. Amen.

Act 24:1-9

1. And after five days Ananias the high-priest descended with the elders, and with a certain orator named Tertullus, who informed the governor against Paul.

2. And when he was called forth, Tertullus began to accuse him, saying, Seeing that by thee we enjoy great quietness, and that very worthy deeds are done unto this nation by thy providence,

3. We accept it always, and in all places, most noble Felix, with all thankfulness.

4. Notwithstanding, that I be not further tedious unto thee, I pray thee that thou wouldst hear us of thy clemency a few words.

5. For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes:

6. Who also hath gone about to profane the temple: whom we took, and would have judged according to our law.

7. But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of our hands,

8. Commanding his accusers to come unto thee: by examining of whom thyself mayest take knowledge of all these things, whereof we accuse him.

9. And the Jews also assented, saying that these things were so.

Paul Misunderstood

We seem to know something about the Apostle Paul ourselves, having spent many weeks, as it were, in his living society. We have learned to love him; we have felt ourselves in the presence of a strong and gracious nature. Today we may hear what another man has to say about him. Once before we were struck almost to the point of amusement when Paul was mistaken for "that Egyptian, which before these days made an uproar, and led out into the wilderness four thousand men that were murderers." Today a hired orator describes Paul the very Paul with whom we have companied all this time as "a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes." Does this tally with what you know about him? As we have read the exciting story from page to page, has it ever occurred to you to say, respecting the living hero, "pestilent fellow"? When he preached upon Mars' Hill, when he comforted the sick and the desolate, when he prayed his great prayers, when he charged the elders of the Church at Ephesus, did it ever occur to you to characterise him as "a mover of sedition"? Here is a man who was paid to abuse Paul. There is no cause too bad not to hire an advocate to represent it. Abuse is the easiest of all human tasks. It falls in, too, with a natural rhythm, with the disposition and tendency of some natures. They would not speak their mother tongue if they did not speak vituperatively: they would stammer like men unused to the language if they began to approve and to praise and to characterise any human service in grateful terms. This Tertullus was the genius of abuse; the worse the cause the glibber his tongue. He lives today, and takes the same silver for his flippant eloquence.

How possible it is utterly to misconceive a great character! Paul was utterly misconceived even by some persons who were not viciously dishonest. There is a key to every character, and if you do not get the key of the character, you never can understand the character itself. We must not condemn all men as hypocrites whom we cannot comprehend. Let us own that very much of what they do looks suspicious, self-seeking, ambitious, ignoble. It may not be so. The difficulty of the man of one idea is to understand any other man who has two: the man of one idea has a short and chopping way of speaking about other people, not knowing that, when he pronounces them dishonest, he is proclaiming himself a most virtuous person. Let us understand that there are some men in history, alike in the Church and in the State, whom we are unable to comprehend; but let us not, therefore, imagine that they are bad men. Illustrious names, which cannot be mentioned in church without being misunderstood, will at once occur to every man. Some of us are so easy to understand, simply because there is so little to be comprehended. Then it is so easy to wash our hands in innocency by condemning the ambiguousness or ambitiousness of other people. Paul could not be understood by any man who for one single moment ever considered his own happiness; that consideration would disentitle the critic to a place on the judgment-seat. If any man let me say it again, until we become familiar with the distressing truth can for one single instant consider his own advantage, good, place, or security, he cannot read the life of the Apostle Paul with the smallest comprehension of its meaning. Cowardice cannot understand heroism; selfishness cannot comprehend self-sacrifice; self-idolatry cannot understand the Cross. We should try to find the key of every character in other words, the starting-point, or the basis-principle, and, having secured that, all the rest will be easy of interpretation. Start with the idea that Christ's kingdom was of this world, and the New Testament is a maze of contradiction, a labyrinth of perplexity. No character was so much misunderstood as Jesus Christ's: he knew it, he said it; he made that fact into a source of comfort to all who should follow him in its representation; said he, "If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household!" When blasphemy culminates in some daring act, all the actions which lie under that deed become quite easy tricks. Blasphemy culminated in calling the master of the house "Beelzebub" after that all other abuse was an easy performance, a small and pitiable miracle. Conscience itself may start from a wrong point in the estimation of character, and "if the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" To have a conscience that does not rest on reason, to have a court in which there is no daylight how immediate and tremendous the moral consequences! Even conscience may be twisted, perverted, poisoned. When that is the case it is impossible to understand childhood, simplicity, purity, unselfishness, and sacrifice.

Here, too, is the possibility of excluding from the mind every thought characterised by breadth and charity. It does not occur to the paid pleader to say, "This man is insane; this man is afflicted with the disease of romance; this prisoner has a craze about a theory too lofty or too immaterial for the present state of things." Sometimes a charitable spirit will take some such view. No such estimate is formed by Tertullus respecting Paul. Paul is to the orator "a pestilent fellow" and "a mover of sedition" and "a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes,' for he knew that he was talking to a man who could only understand coarse epithets, for he himself, though a judge in those times, was the basest of his tribe. There was no meaner soul in all the Roman service than Felix. He, with his brother Pallas, had been a slave; by a cunning equal to Iscariot's own, he had worked himself up to a rulership, to high influence in the court, and his one object, as we shall find presently, was to be paid for his acquittals. Had not Paul dropped a word about some collection, or offering, which he had been making for the poor saints? Had the chink of money been heard at all? If so, the explanation is at hand which will characterise the whole policy of Felix. Meanwhile, we know nothing about that; but we do know, from history, that Felix was the most venal and detestable of his kind. To have spoken to Felix, therefore, about romance, extravagance, mental hallucination, would have been to throw straw to a tiger. Tertullus had head enough to know that only such words as "pest," "insurrectionist," and "ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes" could touch the base mind of the judge.

Yet, without viciousness, there may be great narrowness of mind, which excludes all great ideas and sublime possibilities. You will contract that narrowness if you do not sometimes come out of your little village into great London. You will doze so long over your own parochial placidity and security, until you for get that there is a solar system. Meet men who will contradict you; speak in companies that dare oppose you. Never assume finality of judgment. The Bible itself is a book of beginnings without endings. We may so live in a little, narrow, murky sphere as to mistake the very truth which it is our wish to serve. That is an instance of the light within being darkness. I know not of any more distressing spectacle than for a man to be using great words with little meanings. There is nothing so pitiful, so heart-breaking, to the apostolic mind, the heroic soul, as to hear infinite words without infinite meanings. So the words "God," "Christ," "Cross," "forgiveness," "immortality," "heaven" we have all heard these immeasurable terms employed with measurable meanings. I venture this line of remark to show that I am not wishful to make every man into a Tertullus who opposes apostolic life and thought. It is possible honestly to oppose even the Apostle Paul, but the honesty itself is an expression of mental contractedness. What is perfectly right to the eye within given points may be astronomically wrong when the whole occasion is taken in. You would not find fault with a child who said, "The earth is stable, immovable." Within given points the child is talking sense; yet the earth never stands still; if she paused one moment, she would drop out of her sphere and be lost. So men may be parochially right and imperially wrong; men may be perfectly orthodox within the limits of a creed and unpardonably heterodox within the compass of a faith.

How wonderful it is that even Tertullus is obliged to compliment the man whom he was paid to abuse! Let us hear what Paul was on the showing of Tertullus. First, he was "a pestilent fellow." We have seen there was nothing negative about Paul, and Tertullus confirms that view. Paul was not a quiet character; wherever he was he was astir; the spirit of seven men was in him. His was an active faith; it was not like the faith of some of us a quietly rotting thing, sending up or rather allowing to escape from it odours of an unhealthy and poisonous kind. Paul was always alive. If he slept, we know nothing about it: we have no diary of his sleep; the pages are alive with his activity. If he was a bad man, there was nothing like him in the whole market place of badness.

According to Tertullus, Paul was also "a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world" a sentence intended to touch the ear of the Roman judge. As to being "a pestilent fellow," the phrase was vague, but now Felix might well listen with double attention, when the man before him was accused of being an insurrectionist, stirring up the Jews against the Roman rule. We have found that Paul was a moving man. Tertullus again confirms our impression. That he was "a mover of sedition" in the sense implied by Tertullus when using the word we have not found, but that he was the prince of revolutionists we do know. Every Christian is a revolutionist. Christianity does not plaster walls that are falling; it pulls them down; it tears up the foundations, uproots them; and, after this disestablishment, it begins to build up, and it builds for eternity.

There was a third qualification which Tertullus could not omit: Paul was "a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes." So the prisoner is not made into a little man even by the paid accuser. We felt that he never could be held in contempt. There is no contempt in the impeachment of Tertullus; the man is a great man "pestilent," "seditious," "a ringleader" of whatever sect he enters. Put him where you will, he becomes the principal man in that company ere the sun go down. A rich banker said, when some one asked him questions regarding the wondrous fortune which he had amassed, "I cannot help it; if I were tonight stripped and turned into the streets of Copenhagen, I would be as rich in ten years as I am now I cannot help it." Paul could not help being the first man of every company. He was not a whit behind the very chief of the apostles; without asserting a claim, he entered into a sovereignty. So even Tertullus is obliged to eulogise the man he was hired to calumniate.

What is the inevitable issue of all narrow-mindedness? That issue is stated in the text that issue, indeed, is falsehood. The proof you find in the sixth verse: "who also hath gone about to profane the temple." That was a lie; but that is the inevitable outcome of narrow-mindedness. The narrow-minded man must either end his days in falsehood or in insanity. If you have a narrow mind, you may be kept tolerably right so long as you are kept in activity your fussiness will save you but if anything should occur to lay you on one side, you will become melancholy and insane. Entertain liberal ideas; live under the whole sky; go out in rainy weather as well as in sunshine and say, "All this is under the same blue, kind, warm heaven." Do not fix yourselves in relation to some particular point as if that were the universe. The garden is all God's, and you may eat of every tree that is in it, and the proof of that liberality is in the fact that there is one tree you may not touch. That is the security of liberty; that is the centre that binds all the points of the circumference into one solid and radiant cohesion.

Imagine Tertullus being excited regarding the purity of the temple! Look at him as he refers with tears in his musical voice to the possibility of the temple being profaned! How suddenly some men become pious! How wonderfully they are excited about the temple under some circumstances! What a genius is hypocrisy! What a splendid gift of concealment it possesses! You cannot misrepresent the people in the temple and yet be concerned honestly for the temple itself; if you can tell what is not true about any brother who is in the house along with you, you cannot feel honestly about the house itself. The truth is one; we cannot be true in one point out of ten; herein is the philosophy of that marvellous saying, "He that offends in one point offends in all," because truth is an infinite solid: it cannot be disintegrated into particles, in some of which we claim a right of proprietorship.

The incident would hardly be worth dwelling upon were it confined to its own four corners, but it is a typical instance repeated continually in our day. Whenever the enemy represents the Christian cause he cannot get away from the lines of this dazzling impeachment. This is the model speech the accidents vary, the fervour of the speaker goes up or down according to individual temperament; but the speech is the same. Should there arise a burning evangelist in our days, accounting all things loss that he may win Christ, having one object, and that to bless men, Tertullus is instantly developed by his presence. The good develops the bad: the explanation of the devil is in God. Let a George Fox arise the founder of the sect of the Quakers or Friends and how will he be characterised, except as "a pestilent fellow," "a mover of sedition," and "a ringleader of a sect"? There are no other words; this is the brief vocabulary. The devil is as poverty-stricken in language as he was in original invention; he has only one lie to tell, and what genius he has is to be found in the art with which he varies the telling of it. Let a John Wesley arise, or a George Whitefield, a John Bunyan or a John Nelson; read the early annals of English Christianity and evangelism; read the history of the early Methodist preachers, and you will find that every age that has brought a Paul has brought along with him a Tertullus. Thank God! nothing but epithets can be hurled against Christianity and its teachers; epithets are bruised by the very violence which throws them hard words enough, biting sarcasms enough, great swelling words of impeachment enough; but epithets only. Christianity stands up today queenly, royal, pure, stainless every stone thrown at her lying at her feet: herself untouched, unharmed; still putting out her arms, welcoming men to redemption, forgiveness, and heaven.