Acts 10

The body lay in an upper chamber, and was surrounded by “saints and widows,” that is, by fellow disciples and by those she had helped. With a natural and tender touch, Luke tells how these

Jaffa—Ancient Joppa.

grieving but grateful beneficiaries recited her memorial. But Peter puts them all forth. He would be alone with God, especially when he had so great a request to urge, so mighty a boon to obtain. Kneeling down, he prayed! The spirit of the prayer, its intense fervor and its energy of faith, and the motive which he urged, the greater glory of Christ, we may know by the assurance given to Peter by the Holy Ghost—that inward assurance by which he was prompted to say, “Tabitha, arise.” His faith was in the divine power, and his word was guided by the divine spirit. In response to his faith, immediately upon the utterance of his word, “she opened her eyes,” and her spirit came again. To those who mourned her dead, “saints and widows, he presented her alive.” And joy takes the place of mourning. In all this, not Peter, but Peter’s Lord, is glorified. Therefore it was that, when the people of Joppa heard of this restored life of Dorcas, many heeded the preaching of Jesus the Restorer, and believed in him unto a higher, even an everlasting life.

43. Simon Peter tarries in the House of the Tanner Simon.—“Many days,” indicating a sufficient period for the work to be done, in connection with his stay there. The tanner’s business—that of preparing skins for different uses—was an unclean one, and therefore dishonorable in Jewish estimation, because it required contact with dead animals. But Peter’s Judaism is already so much modified, and his apprehension of Christ’s exposures of Pharisaic interpretation so clear, that he is willing to risk the uncleanness and the dishonor, by sharing the home and table of his namesake, the hospitable Christian tanner. B.

1. THERE was a certain man in Cæsarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the 2 Italian band, a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much 3 alms to the people, and prayed to God alway. He saw in a vision evidently about the 4 ninth hour of the day an angel of God coming in to him, and saying unto him, Cornelius. 5 And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto 6 him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God. And now send 7 men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter: he lodgeth with one Simon

7 a tanner, whose house is by the sea side: he shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do. And when the angel which spake unto Cornelius was departed, he called two of his household servants, and a devout soldier of them that waited on him continually; and when he had declared all these things unto them, he sent them to Joppa. 9 On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: and he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, and saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending unto him, as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: wherein were all manner of fourfooted beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common. This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven. Now while Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had made enquiry for Simon’s house, and stood before the gate, and called, and asked whether Simon, which was surnamed Peter, were lodged there. 19 While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee. 20 Arise therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them. Then Peter went down to the men which were sent unto him from Cornelius; and said, Behold, I am he whom ye seek: what is the cause wherefore ye are come? And they said, Cornelius the centurion, a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nation of the Jews, was warned from God by an holy angel to send for thee into his house, and to hear words of thee. Then called he them in, and lodged them. And on the morrow Peter went away with them, and certain brethren from Joppa accompanied him.

ALMS and prayers are branches from a common stem, which binds them together. That stem is the moral law of God; that law to which, though it be not the covenant under which (as Christian men) we live, we must yet be conformed as a rule of life. The law branches out into two great precepts—supreme and unbounded love to God, and love to our neighbor as to ourselves. Now, the man who really and habitually prays, the man who lives in the spirit of prayer, fulfills the first great branch of duty. True spiritual prayer—“the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man,” such as was that of Cornelius—is the outcome and expression of a man’s duty to God. Such prayer is called in Scripture “incense”; partly from its reaching the throne of grace, even as incense when kindled soars up to the sky; partly from its spiritual fragrance and acceptability. “Let my prayer be set forth in thy sight as the incense.” And the man who gives alms, in the true spirit of almsgiving, is equally fulfilling the second great branch of duty. Devout almsgiving—such as was that of Cornelius, who “gave much alms to the people”—is the outcome and expression of a man’s duty to his neighbor. Yet think not that the act passes no further than to our neighbor. It too, no less than prayer, comes up before God as a memorial. It too, no less than prayer, finds in the fragrant, soaring incense its Scriptural emblem and type. E. M. G.

NOT only was God’s covenant made with the Jewish nation, not only did he intrust that nation with his word and ordinances of worship, not only was Christ a Jew, and as he affirmed, “salvation was of the Jews,” but the first Christian disciples, and the entire membership of the first Christian Church up to this period, were members of the Jewish Church, by descent or adoption. They were all imbued with the prevalent Jewish belief, respecting the essential importance of the leading Mosaic rites. They were filled with the Jewish feeling of their immense superiority as God’s people over all other nations. It seemed natural to them, therefore, when Christianity was to be introduced among the Gentiles (and they knew that all nations were to receive the gospel), that it should be introduced under Jewish auspices and in connection with long venerated Jewish forms. The apostles, with others, were still imbued with these conceits and prejudices.

Before God’s work among the Gentiles can be begun, these teachers must be taught; their narrow, erroneous notions removed. First and emphatically they must know that in Christ Jesus the Gentile is equal to, is one with the Jew: “a fellow-heir, of the same body, and partaker of the same promise by the gospel.” And this is the lesson conveyed by the vision to Peter, the man strongest in feeling and prejudice, the foremost, most energetic, whole-souled in active obedience, among the body of apostles. More fully afterward, and frequently, the same needed lesson was taught.

It is conveyed to Peter in the first act of transition in the ministry of the gospel, from the Jew to the Gentile. A period this of marked significance, as a turning-point in the history of the Christian Church. And because so necessary, at this eminent juncture, to prepare the body of apostles and disciples for right ministry among the Gentiles, God added supernatural means to the natural. He connected a miraculous vision with many providences. As respects the latter, it is interesting to note how events are linked in with each other by God’s plan and providence. Lydda was nigh to Joppa, so Peter was called from Lydda. Now, Joppa is so nigh to Cesarea that he is called from Joppa. Yet it is the Lord and the Lord’s work that call. So God ever marshals providences in the way and for the discharge of our duty.

Another point worthy of note is the analogy between this bringing together of Peter and Cornelius and that of Saul and Ananias. Each was prefaced with a double and responsive vision, and with instruction, from God; and a hindering difficulty removed from the minds of Ananias and Peter.

1,2. The Position and Character of Cornelius.—Cesarea, on the Mediterranean coast, about thirty miles north of Joppa and sixty northwest from Jerusalem, was lavishly built by Herod the Great, and made his residence and the civil and military capital of Judea. Now, it was the seat of the Roman procurators or governors, as is frequently intimated in the Acts. B.—The gospel made its first conquest over heathenism in this large city, named from the Roman Cæsar, a military stronghold and naval arsenal of the Roman power. And it made that conquest over a soldier called Cornelius, one of the noblest of Roman names—an officer of the Italic band—a cohort of Roman blood. In his conversion we may see a prophetic intimation of the submission of the great Fourth Monarchy to the mild yoke of the gospel. Devout. A worshiper of one God, in contradistinction to polytheists and idolators. In the providence of God, the military successes of the Macedonian and Roman monarchies had impaired the local reverence for national deities, and had cleared the ground for the planting of a purer faith. The diffusion of the Hebrew Scriptures and the decomposition of paganism had tended to produce a class of persons in all parts of the world who may be said to have been the seminary of the Gentile Church. These were “the devout,” or God-fearing, of the Acts. Tired of polytheism, and yet unwilling to subject themselves to the ceremonial law, these “God-fearing” men received with joy the tidings of the gospel; they recognized in Christianity a religion which satisfied the wants of their nature, the requirements of their reason, and the yearnings of their hearts, without impairing any of the reverence with which they had learned to regard the God of the Old Testament, but rather, and much more, enlarging the ideas they had already conceived of his merciful purposes and glorious attributes. The apostles everywhere in their journeys met with this class of proselytes. W.

Three centurions of the New Testament are referred to as favoring the truth, either in the person of Christ—as the centurion of Capernaum, and the witness of the crucifixion—or, as in this case, under such forms as the truth had been brought to his knowledge. The character here given him is specially attractive when we consider that he was only a truth-loving and -seeking man, looking for and taking it where he could find it, and voluntarily finding and accepting enough from the Jewish Scriptures and worship to make him devout—that is, to lead him to the true and filial fear and personal worship of God. Such a man we have here. Like Abraham, he influenced his household by imparting his own convictions of duty and worship. To God’s poor or to God’s call, he consecrated a portion of God’s intrusted gifts. And in all, in the ordering of his own life, in the guidance of his household, and in his helpful alms, he looked upward continually for divine direction, acceptance, and blessing. All this is conveyed by the statement of inspiration. Only partially is he taught, but he heartily receives and faithfully acts out all he had learned of God and his will. And how many the evidences in all missionary history that God prepares heathen hearts for his gospel, and that with but little of truth and without specific human instrumentality he takes possession of many such hearts!

3-6. Cornelius is instructed by an Angel of God, in a Vision.—At the afternoon hour of prayer, or three o’clock, while himself at prayer, there appeared coming in to him a human form, marked in some manner intelligibly to him as a messenger from another world. To the certain sight and to the audible call of this supernatural being, the alarmed centurion uttered the briefest question in response.

Two things are conveyed in the angel’s message. Both intimate a superhuman knowledge: one in regard to the internal acting of the mind of God, the other in regard to God’s will respecting the two men, Cornelius and Peter. First he says, God has heard thy prayers and beheld thy gifts, and he remembers both. This direct assurance, for the encouragement and greater trust of the centurion, none other than a heavenly messenger could give. Next, he directs Cornelius to send for Peter as his instructor, merely using his own superior knowledge to inform the centurion where the apostle was to be found. But, besides the simple encouraging assurance, the angel teaches him nothing. He is only a celestial guide to a human teacher! Because the occasion is so great and prophetic, the first opening of the fold-door to the “other sheep” of the great Good Shepherd, or the first breaking down of the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, therefore it is signalized by the sending of this messenger from heaven. But even God’s angels, while they joyfully and triumphantly herald the advent, redemption, and glory of the Incarnate Son, have no part in the direct ministry of the gospel. For this ministry he exclusively uses and honors a human instrumentality.

7,8. Obedient to the Vision, Cornelius sends Three Messengers to Peter.—Gladly and instantly he obeys the divine direction. He selects and summons two household servants and a soldier of his band, all in sympathy with his devout feeling and life, to whom he could therefore fully unfold the vision and intelligently commit the peculiar errand and message. And on the same afternoon, the three men start for Joppa, arriving on the next day soon after noon. B.

Cornelius was in Cesarea and Peter in Joppa—the Roman soldier in the modern city, which was built and named in the Emperor’s honor—the Jewish apostle in the ancient seaport which associates its name with the early passages of Hebrew history—with the voyage of Jonah, the building of the Temple, the wars of the Maccabees. All the splendor of Cesarea, its buildings and its ships, and the Temple of Rome and the Emperor, which the sailors saw far out at sea, all has long since vanished. Herod’s magnificent city is a wreck on the shore. A few ruins are all that remain of the harbor. Joppa lingers on, like the Jewish people, dejected but not destroyed. Cesarea has perished, like the Roman Empire which called it into existence. H.

Ruins of Cesarea. (From the north.)

9-16. What Peter saw while in a Trance.—On the next day at noon, within half an hour of the arrival of the centurion’s messengers, Peter sought the secluded house-top, to lift his vision and heart heavenward, as he was wont. After his prayer, it would seem, while waiting the call to the noonday meal and craving food, the trance, or supernatural absorption of mind upon themes supernaturally suggested, took place. He saw heaven open—not, as Stephen, the heavens—but that bound of the visible upper sky which we call heaven, and above which we place the region of God’s dwelling-place. Within the immense folds of a vast seemingly woven fabric, knit together by four suspending cords, and rapidly lowered from the cleft sky to the level of Peter’s vision, he saw all manner of clean and unclean animals. And he heard a voice summoning him to kill and eat. To his respectful but distinct demur, that he could not partake that which was ceremonially unclean, the voice sharply forbade him call that unclean which God had made clean.

No instruction by symbol could possibly be clearer, more decisive than this. The very method of it, the suddenness, swiftness, and repetition in the descent and ascent of this vast sheeted fabric with its strange contents, and the shortness and sharpness of the command and reproof, all were admirably suited to Peter’s strong nature. More than the other apostles, and for them, he needed just such plain teaching. And he could neither misunderstand nor forget it, when the immediate event made its interpretation clear, and even lent after-force to the vision itself. B.

There was then a distinction between clean and unclean, indicated by the calling of Abraham, but more explicitly by the Levitical rites and laws; yet appointed from the beginning, for we read of it in the time of Noah; a distinction applicable to men, to food, to dwellings, to land, to animals. This distinction was made by God for special ends, but at Christ’s death the distinction had served its purpose. God interposed, and threw down the middle wall of partition; not rejecting the Jew, yet accepting the Gentile; not obliterating national distinctions, but making these no longer of any importance, and attaching to them no spiritual or religious privilege. Without lowering the Jew, he lifted up the Gentile; not making the Jew unclean, but the Gentile clean; so that from that time there should be (so far as access to God was concerned) “neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free.” In the vision or trance, Peter was taught that the Gentile was now made as clean as the Jew; that God had done it, and that even he, though the apostle of the circumcision, must at once accept the verdict. Bonar.

17-20. The Messengers arrive, and the Spirit instructs Peter.—While he pondered the vision, the three men from Cornelius stand at Simon’s door asking for Peter. This the apostle learns not from any human summons, but from the intimation of the same Divine Spirit who had previously produced the audible voice. The vision is thus linked with the three visitors and their errand. And the connection is confirmed by the positive Divine direction, that Peter should return with these men whither they went, and the conclusive assurance that the Holy Ghost had sent them on this errand. No explanation of the vision has been offered. But Peter is bidden to obey certain directions, to do something, and in the doing all his questions about the vision were to be resolved. Here is the same principle we meet at every step in the histories of the Old and New Testaments. It is that obedience leads to knowledge. “We shall know if we follow on.” If any one wills to do God’s will, he shall know. In what follows we find this principle again verified. Both Peter and Cornelius, in their implicit following of the Spirit’s directions, learn that which they desire to know, and with knowledge receive larger grace. B.

Points of Useful Thought.—We miss very much devotional joy, by the neglect of fragmentary prayer. In the intervals which separate periodical seasons of devotion, we need a habit of offering up brief ejaculatory expressions of devout feeling. The morning and the evening sacrifice depend very much upon these interspersed offerings, as these in return are dependent on those. Communion with God in both is assisted by linking the “set times” together by a chain of heavenward thoughts and aspirations, in the breaks which occur in our labors and amusements. Nothing else can do this so naturally as the habit of ejaculatory prayer. The spirit of prayer may run along the line of such a habit through a lifetime. So one may live in a state of prayer, “a devout man that prays always.” A. P.

The eyes which run through the whole earth behold also the searching soul struggling for life and light which it can not procure for itself. To the upright there ariseth light in the darkness; yet by degrees, through the use of means, only and alone through the preaching of a full and free gospel, of which Christ is the center, peace the basis, and grace the glad tidings. This man who fears God and worketh righteousness is pleasing to him, not in order that he may remain what he is, but that by the way of faith and repentance he may be received into the kingdom of God, without which there is no safety for those who in themselves are lost. Van O.

Cornelius was recompensed for his prayers and alms by the visit of an angel, by the visit of an apostle, by the glad tidings of the gospel, and, to crown all, by the gift of the Holy Ghost. How striking an instance of the large and munificent scale on which God responds to the desires and efforts which his own free grace has prompted—of his “giving more” (as is his wont) “than either we desire or deserve”! How wonderful a fulfillment of the promise made by our Lord both to secret alms and secret prayers—“Thy Father, which seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly.” E. M. G.

Beneficence or almsgiving is always remembered of God, and ranks in his estimate with prayer or direct worship. It is counted a vital part of that obedience which is worship in act or life. It comes from the heart equally with that worship which finds expression in uttered prayer and praise. Prayer and alms equally show the presence of an operative faith and a living active love.

The diversity of God’s methods and the special adaptation of each to his particular purpose are illustrated in this case of Cornelius as compared with that of Saul. An obscure disciple baptized and received into the Church the great apostle to the Gentiles; and this because God would have his ministry from the first free from all human dependence. But this first pagan disciple, a purely Gentile member of the Christian Church, was received into Church fellowship, not even by Philip the evangelist who lived at Cesarea, but by the foremost of the apostles; and this because God would throw around an event so signal, prophetic, and glorious—the receiving of this first-fruit of a world harvest—all that could give it impressiveness and significance! B.

Doubting nothing! That is the secret of liberty, of efficiency, of success in every work which is undertaken by men: a confidence in the practicability, in the value of the work, in the Divine authority which imposes it upon us as an obligatory work, and in the Divine providence and power which will bring it to a successful performance. R. S. S.

24. And the morrow after they entered into Cæsarea. And Cornelius waited for them, and 25 had called together his kinsmen and near friends. And as Peter was coming in, Cornelius 26 met him, and fell down at his feet, and worshipped him. But Peter took him up, saying, 27 Stand up; I myself also am a man. And as he talked with him, he went in, and found 28 many that were come together. And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlaw- 29 ful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; 30 but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean. Therefore 31 came I unto you without gainsaying, as soon as I was sent for: I ask therefore for what 32 intent ye have sent for me? And Cornelius said, Four days ago I was fasting until this 33 hour; and at the ninth hour I prayed in my house, and, behold, a man stood before me in 34 bright clothing, and said, Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms are had in remem- 35 brance in the sight of God. Send therefore to Joppa, and call hither Simon, whose sur- 36 name is Peter; he is lodged in the house of one Simon a tanner by the sea side: who, when 37 he cometh, shall speak unto thee. Immediately therefore I sent to thee; and thou hast 38 well done that thou art come. Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear 39 all things that are commanded thee of God. 40 Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of 41 persons: but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted 42 with him. The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus 43 Christ: (he is Lord of all:) that word ye know, which was published throughout all 44 Judæa, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; how God anointed 45 Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and 46 healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him. And we are witnesses 47 of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew 48 and hanged on a tree: him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly; not to 49 all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink 50 with him after he rose from the dead. And he commanded us to preach unto the people, 51 and to testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. 52 To him give all the prophets witness, that through his name whosoever believeth in him 53 shall receive remission of sins. 54 While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost fell an all them which heard the 55 word. And they of the circumcision which believed were astonished, as many as came 56 with Peter, because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. 57 For they heard them speak with tongues, and magnify God. Then answered Peter, Can 58 any man forbid water, that these should not be baptized, which have received the Holy 59 Ghost as well as we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord. 60 Then prayed they him to tarry certain days.

TRUTH and mercy and self-devotion in men are greater than all miracles, and have the very essence of God in them. Therefore we are bound to thank him for every disinterested act performed by any man, for every generous and heroic deed, for the search after truth, simply because it is truth, by those great minds that seek her as hid treasure, for unpaid devotion to the cause of suffering and want, for the blessed feet that seek out shame and sin, and the lips that plead with them to bring them home contrite and forgiven. These are all testimonies to the greatness of the soul of man, and therefore to the being of God. Those footsteps are echoes of the feet of him who went about doing good, and help us to believe that he once walked our earth. Ker.

In every nation, now that Jesus Christ has come, there is an equal access to the open door for every tongue and tribe and people. Under this new and heavenly reign of light and love which has been set up, all are free citizens. There are no external disqualifications. There are no internal incapabilities for being saved. All this Peter had just found out in a peculiar way, the vision of the four-cornered sheet three times let down from heaven, to show him that the ceremonial distinctions of things to be lawfully eaten, symbols of all other natural disqualifications, were abolished. The Gentile world which God has now liberated from its long neglect, “call not thou common.” But go to it, preach to it, respect and love human nature in Cesarea just as much as in Jerusalem or Bethany: there is no difference. The gospel is no respecter of persons. Christ died for all. F. H. D.

24-33. After the narrative of the first Christian Pentecost, the second book of Luke scarcely contains a picture which in beauty and interest can be placed above that of the reception into the Church of Cornelius and his household. It is the history of the Gentile day of Pentecost. Moment worthy of eternal remembrance, when the first Gentile threshold was crossed for the first time by the feet of them who published peace, and the earliest beam of light dawned on the land of the shadow of death! Van O.

The three messengers from Cornelius tarried over night in the house of Simon at Joppa. On the next morning Peter departed with them for Cesarea, a distance of thirty Roman miles. Six Jewish Christians of Joppa voluntarily accompanied him. The journey required a day and a half; so that they reached Cesarea the day following, or the fourth day after the vision of Cornelius.

The centurion, anticipating the time of their arrival, had called together a considerable company, from his own and other friendly Gentile households. Whatever blessing is to come, he would extend its effects to as many as he could reach. Regarding Peter as one directly and especially sent of God, his mind ingrained with the Roman notion of deifying such ambassadors from heaven, the centurion would have rendered divine honors to the apostle upon his entrance. But instantly Peter checked his purpose, gave him his hand, and bade him stand; assuring him that he himself was only a man. After a moment’s friendly converse, Peter went in to the gathered company. Without further reference to Cornelius, he first accounts for his—to them strange—presence, a Jew among Gentiles, by frankly declaring that God had taken away his Jewish prejudice; had taught him that all nations were equally acceptable to Him. He then asks why they have summoned him. To this question Cornelius replies by reciting his vision of the fourth afternoon before—the direction he had received, and his obedience to it—and then expresses the readiness of all present to hear all things commanded of God for Peter’s utterance.

34, 35. Peter’s Introduction: all Men and Nations alike before God.—The singular coincidence of the two miraculous visions, and the manifest spirit and desire of this company of Gentile souls, at once deepened into strong settled assurance the new view God had taught him of the relation of the Gentiles to the Gospel. And this conviction naturally first finds utterance, “I have thoroughly learned this, that God looks favorably upon Gentile and Jew alike, and on the single condition of filial fear in the heart, and integrity in the life.” But Peter stops not here. His new knowledge of something that had always been true could not help Cornelius. If he had no more to say he need not have come. For if alms and prayers, with a devout and beneficent life, were sufficient for a man’s justification before God, then this man and his company need no “words” of Peter “telling them how they may be saved.” If Cornelius himself (not merely his prayers and alms) had been already accepted by God, then neither vision nor angel, neither Peter nor his gospel of Christ, neither divine nor human baptism would have been necessary or appropriate. But Peter saw in this “fearing God and working righteousness” only the indications that God had been preparing these devout hearts for the further essential knowledge of Christ, in his sacrificing life and death, his resurrection and exaltation; and for the instant glad acceptance of this justifying Saviour. And this is the “Word” he proceeds to preach.

36, 37. Substance of the Word preached, and the Sphere of its Proclamation thus far.—That Word God had sent to the children of Israel, and it had been published from the Baptist’s coming in all the country of the Jews. These general facts they knew. But the substance of that Word, which they did not know, he here first sums up, in a clause and an included parenthesis: preaching peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all). No single word expresses so well and winningly the very heart of the gospel, in its design and effect upon human souls, as this word “peace.” It is God’s peace, for there is no other. And the giver is God, in the person of Jesus Christ his Son. There is no other giver, for He is Lord over all souls. And this proclamation of peace provided and proffered to men in their disquiet—disquiet because of sin and its consequent misery—fully meets, and it alone meets, the deepest most vital craving of the disturbed heart. How winning, how blessed then this divine gospel, with this its great disclosure—Christ, God over all, in good-will to men, bringing peace upon earth!

38-43. The Particulars of this Published Divine Gospel, the Facts of Christ’s Incarnate Career, here testified to by Peter, and referred back to Previous

Testimony by the Prophets.—The same facts that he has heretofore preached to Jews of every degree, he declares to this first audience of Gentiles. While he asserts Christ’s Lordship over men, and his ordination as Judge of quick and dead in the great and final assize, he yet declares His humanity by the name Jesus of Nazareth, and tells of His ignominious death by hanging on a tree.

By His anointment “with the Holy Ghost and with power,” the apostle intimates Christ’s threefold functions as God’s appointed prophet, priest, and king for men, for only these three were anointed among men. His beneficent and blessed ministry is summed up in the simple but sublime record: He went about doing good! To all his marvels of divine power in healing and in casting out devils, to all his deeds of mercy and help, the apostle here interjects the fact that he himself was witness. Also His death upon the Cross, and His resurrection upon the third day, Peter declares. And here again he refers to his own personal witness and knowledge. He states a fact that thoughtful readers of the Gospel history have noticed, but which is nowhere stated in that history. It is that the risen Saviour showed himself only to disciples, never to unbelievers. The single object of the showing was to secure witnesses enough and of such a character as could testify and as would be credited. Such witnesses could not be found among unbelievers. They could only be found among honest disciples, and that after testimony strong and conclusive enough to overbear their previous honest doubt and unbelief.

And the witnesses of Christ’s beautiful and blessed life, they who had companied with him during the brief period of his ministry to men, who had known of his condemnation and death by the Cross, who had beheld him arisen and saw him ascend to heaven, these chosen witnesses (of whom Peter was one of the foremost) Christ had commissioned to speak unto all people *that which they knew, and to testify that they had seen; and to declare that He, the ascended Redeemer, should finally reappear as the Judge of the quick and dead. Lastly, to complete, confirm, and crown these details of Christ’s office-work on earth and in heaven, the apostle declares the sublime end and object of all: that whosoever believeth in Him shall receive remission of sins. This, he affirms, is the witness of the prophets to Christ, thereby asserting that this is the ultimate supreme fact of the Old and New Testament Gospel. The same Being who is LORD and JUDGE of all is the SAVIOUR of all that trust in Him. This Lord and Saviour—in his incarnate life of love, his death of shame, and his glorious resurrection and ascension, already often preached to Jewish rulers and people—by express command of God Peter now preached to this first-gathered company of Gentiles. And similar are the results which ensue.

44-48. Gentiles receive the Holy Ghost and are baptized, while Believing Jews stand amazed.—The prayers of Cornelius find now abundant answer. In the preaching of Christ all is revealed that he sought to know and receive. And not the centurion alone, but the whole Gentile company gathered at his call, listened, heeded, believed, and received the offered Saviour. And now, as ofttimes before upon Jewish multitudes, upon these first-fruits of the Gentiles descended the fullness of the power of the Holy Ghost, quickening, converting, and endowing with limited supernatural gifts. It was the Pentecost of the Gentiles, and they also spake with tongues, and magnified the grace of God in their salvation.

This outpouring of the Spirit upon pagan hearers is the significant fact emphasized in the whole narrative. All the previous occurrences by miracle and providence had been definitely arranged to give the utmost prominence and significance to the introduction of the Gentiles into the Christian Church. And this mainly to make the deepest impression upon the minds of all Jewish disciples, apostles and Church members alike; to produce an unquestioning conviction that from henceforth the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile was, by God’s own purpose and hand, for ever broken down. How much needed was this lesson and how hard it was to learn, striking as it did directly at the heart of a prejudice incorporated for ages in the very fabric of the Jewish mind, we may gather from the entire after-history of the Acts, and from large portions of Paul’s leading epistles. The lesson was this: That Judaism was not the way of entrance to Christianity; that the ceremonial rites of the Jewish law were not in any wise conditions of admission to the Christian Church; nay more, that the Mosaic ritual was, in its two chief features, now replaced by two unbloody and simple sacramental symbols, whose significance better suited the new relations of the Church to Christ.

Peter learned this now as the lesson of his vision at Joppa, and at once acted upon it. Taking advantage of the amazement and conviction of the Jewish disciples from Joppa, he puts to them the conclusive question of verse 47. “Uncircumcised as they are,” he says, “they have received the baptism of God. Shall we refuse them the baptism of man, as appointed by Christ?” And, by the ordinance then administered at his command, Peter there declared, and afterward, upon his recital of the facts, the body of the apostles reaffirmed the declaration, that Gentile believers henceforth were to be received through the simple Christian symbol of baptism alone, and were entitled to full, equal right and privilege in Christian Church membership. B.