plishment of which we shall be held responsible—that is for us the important thing. The speculative, the unrevealed, the insoluble-these belong to God; and if we would have the greatest enjoyment in our lives, and make the best out of them for ourselves and others, we shall leave these to God, and be content, each one for himself, to work in his little portion of the great pattern of history, ignorant of its bearing upon the rest, but believing that, if we follow Christ, all will be right at last. When, therefore, I hear friends distressing themselves about the entrance of sin into the world, or about the mysteries continually recurring in the administration of Providence, or about the doctrine of the divine purposes, or even about the meaning of unfulfilled prophecy, I am disposed to say unto them, What are these things to you? Follow Christ. These matters belong to God. He has chosen to put them in his own power. sponsible for them. He will take care of them. Depend upon it, the Judge of all the earth will do right. matters, therefore, to him. Walk in the light. Do the work which the Lord has plainly set before you. Cultivate the Christian character, and give yourselves to the advancement of the Gospel of Christ. That is yours-all else is God's. These intricate matters will become hopelessly tangled in your hands.

You are not re

Leave these

Let God unwind them in his own time, and he will keep them clear. Ah, how much happier we should be if we should trouble ourselves less about the government of the world, and concern ourselves more about our own personal duty!

8

F

XII.

PENTECOST.

ACTS ii.

ROM Galilee the apostles and many of the brethren returned to Jerusalem, in the neighborhood of which, forty days after his resurrection, they saw the Lord ascend from Olivet into heaven. Immediately before he was parted from them by the cloud which received him out of their sight, "he commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father,” and assured them that they should be "baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days" after. So soon, therefore, as they returned to the city, they gave themselves to devotional preparation for the great blessing which they were thus early to receive; and took measures, at the suggestion of Peter, to secure the appointment of one who should be numbered with the apostles in the place of Judas. Then on the day of Pentecost the expected Spirit came, and the work of the Church was inaugurated by a success as signal as that which attended the efforts of the fishermen when the Master said, "Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught."

The name Pentecost, which is simply the Greek word signifying fiftieth, was given to this Jewish feast from the mode in which its date was fixed. It was to be held forty-nine days after the presentation of the first ripe sheaf; and as that service was performed on the second day of the Passover, Pentecost was just fifty days after the first day of the Pass

over.

It was also called the "feast of the harvest" and the "feast of the first-fruits," because a part of its ceremonies consisted in the offering to God of the first-fruits of the crop as actually realized and ready for use. This was done by the "waving" of two baked loaves; but in addition to that service, which was performed by the priest for the whole nation, each individual worshiper was enjoined to give his personal offering of first-fruits,* "a tribute of the free-will offering of his hand, which he was to give according as the Lord his God had blessed him." Jewish writers say that the particular form of confession and thanksgiving prescribed in Deuteronomy xxvi., 5-10, and beginning with the words, "A Syrian ready to perish was my father," was used on this occasion. The feast at first lasted only one day, but in the later years of Jewish history it was prolonged into several days. It was primarily designed to teach the people to acknowledge the goodness of God in giving the blessing of the harvest, and was, in brief, the Thanksgiving-day of ancient Israel.

Two reasons may be assigned for its selection as the date for the first great manifestation of the power of the Holy Spirit in the Christian Church. One is connected with the typical character of the feast itself. In its reference to the Christian life, the services of Pentecost suggest to us the duty of presenting ourselves as redeemed and regenerated to God. They say to us, "Ye are not your own," and they exhort us to make our bodies "living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is our reasonable service." On the day of the Passover, Christ, by the sacrifice of himself, ushered in the harvest of the world. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit descended, turning the fruits of grace into the bread of life, received and fed upon by the souls of men, and

* Deut. xvi., 10.

i

leading them to offer themselves unto God according as James has said, "Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures."

The second reason for the selection of Pentecost for the descent of the Spirit is to be found in the number of Jews from all quarters of the world who attended that feast. The city was filled with strangers who had come to take part in the popular festival of the Mosaic year; and so, through the conversion of many of them to Christ, the seed of the Gospel was introduced at once to many lands, in which it grew up and brought forth abundant fruit.

In the early morning, the whole number of the disciples, amounting, as we learn from the preceding chapter, to one hundred and twenty, had assembled, in all likelihood as on the previous days, for prayer in one place. Some have supposed that they met in one of the chambers connected with the Temple; but besides the fact that this is not even hinted at in the narrative, it is in itself immensely improbable; for the chief priests and scribes must have had still within them that enmity to the Gospel which showed itself in the crucifixion of the Lord, and we can not believe that they would permit his followers thus statedly to come together within the sacred precinct. It is, therefore, in my judgment, much more likely that they met in the upper room, already dear to them from its association with the Last Supper, and with their first meetings with the risen Lord. But, however that question may be settled, we are informed by the historian that, while they were together, there came a sudden sound as of a tempest, which filled the house where they were sitting; and along with that sign to the ear there was another to the eye, in the appearance of fire parted into separate tonguelike flames, each of which sat upon the head of one of the disciples. Amidst these external manifestations, there was

communicated to each the gift of the Holy Spirit, so that he was lifted up into a loftier spiritual condition, in which his perception was clearer, his emotional nature more active, and his whole experience so exalted, that it found utterance for itself in a tongue which up till that moment had been strange to him.

The loud sound as of a tempest was heard through all the city, and created such a ferment as would be produced to-night on this island by some immense explosion. As a consequence, a multitude soon assembled round the house to which the peculiar phenomenon had been traced. But as the crowd stood round, a still greater marvel was perceived; for as the disciples within continued to praise God for his wonderful works, each one of the foreign spectators heard some one of the speakers use his own vernacular. "And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galileans, and how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?"

Much has been written regarding this miracle, and many different opinions have been entertained concerning it, but we can not give any thing like an exhaustive treatment to the subject here. The following things, however, seem to be clear:

1. It was a special gift to the disciples, enabling them to do something which up till that time had been to them impossible. So much is apparent on the very surface of the record; and we wonder how any interpreters could imagine that the effect wrought by the Spirit was produced by miracle on the ears of the hearers rather than on the tongues of the speakers. If this had really been the case, then the proper name for the Divine blessing would have been "the gift of ears" rather than "the gift of tongues," and the symbolical fire would have rested on the multitude rather than on the disciples.