_THE COMMUNITY OF GOODS._
"And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and
soul: and not one of them said that aught of the things which he
possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with
great power gave the apostles their witness of the resurrection
of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. For neither
was there among them any that lacked: for as many as were
possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices
of the things that were sold, and laid them at the apostles'
feet: and distribution was made unto each, according as any one
had need."--ACTS iv. 32-5.
The community of goods and its results next claim our attention in the
course of this sacred record of primitive Church life. The gift of
tongues and this earliest attempt at Christian communism were the two
special features of apostolic, or perhaps we should rather say of
Jerusalem, Christianity. The gift of tongues we find at one or two
other places, at Cæsarea on the first conversion of the Gentiles, at
Ephesus and at Corinth. It then disappeared. The community of goods
was tried at Jerusalem. It lasted there a very short time, and then
faded from the ordinary practice of the Christian Church. The record
of this vain attempt and its manifold results embodies many a lesson
suitable to our modern Christianity.
I. The book of the Acts of the Apostles in its earliest chapters
relates the story of the triumph of the Cross; it also tells of the
mistakes made by its adherents. The Scriptures prove their Divine
origin, and display the secret inspiration and guidance of their
writers, by their thorough impartiality. If in the Old Testament they
are depicting the history of an Abraham or of a David, they do not,
after the example of human biographies, tell of their virtues and
throw the mantle of obscurity over their vices and crimes. If in the
New Testament they are relating the story of apostolic labours, they
record the bad as well as the good, and hesitate not to tell of the
dissimulation of St. Peter, the hot temper and the bitter disputes of
a Paul and a Barnabas.
It is a notable circumstance that, in ancient and modern times alike,
men have stumbled at this sacred impartiality. They have mistaken the
nature of inspiration, and have busied themselves to clear the
character of men like David and the holy Apostles, explaining away the
plainest facts,--the lie of Abraham, the adultery of David, the
weaknesses and infirmities of the Apostles. They have forgotten the
principle involved in the declaration, "Elijah was a man of like
passions with ourselves;" and have been so jealous for the honour of
scriptural characters that they have made their history unreal,
worthless as a living example. St. Jerome, to take but one instance,
was a commentator upon Scripture whose expositions are of the greatest
value, specially because he lived and worked amid the scenes where
Scripture history was written, and while yet living tradition could be
used to illustrate the sacred narrative. St. Jerome applied this
deceptive method to the dissimulation of St. Peter at Antioch of which
St. Paul tells us in the Galatians; maintaining, in opposition to St.
Augustine,[96] that St. Peter was not a dissembler at all, and that
the whole scene at Antioch was a piece of pious acting, got up between
the Apostles in order that St. Paul might have the opportunity of
condemning Judaizing practices. This is an illustration of the
tendency to which I am referring. Men will uphold, not merely the
character of the Scriptures, but the characters of the writers of
Scripture. Yet how clearly do the Sacred Writings distinguish between
these things; how clearly they show that God imparted His treasures in
earthen vessels, vessels that were sometimes very earthy indeed, for
while in one place they give us the Psalms of David, with all their
treasures of spiritual joy, hope, penitence, they in another place
give us the very words of the letter written by King David ordering
the murder of Uriah the Hittite. This jealousy, which refuses to admit
the fallibility and weakness of scriptural personages, has been
applied to the doctrine of the community of goods which finds place in
the passage under review. Some expositors will not allow that it was a
mistake at all; they view the Church at Jerusalem as divinely guided
by the Holy Spirit even in matters of temporal policy; they ascribe to
it an infallibility greater and wider than any claimed for the Roman
Pontiff. He claims infallibility in matters pertaining to faith and
morals, when speaking as universal doctor and teacher of the Universal
Church; but those writers invest the Church at Jerusalem with
infallibility on every question, whether spiritual or temporal, sacred
or secular, because the Holy Ghost had been poured out upon the
twelve Apostles on the day of Pentecost. Now it is quite evident that
neither the Church of Jerusalem nor the Apostles themselves were
guided by an inspiration which rendered them infallible upon all
questions. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit which was granted to them
was a gift which left all their faculties in precisely the same state
as they were before the descent of the Spirit. The Apostles could make
moral mistakes, as Peter did at Antioch; they were not infallible in
forecasting the future, as St. Paul proved when at Ephesus he told the
Ephesian elders that he should not again visit their Church,[97]
while, indeed, he spent much time there in after years. The whole
early Church was mistaken on the important questions of the calling of
the Gentiles, the binding nature of the Levitical law, and the time of
Christ's second coming. The Church of Jerusalem, till the conversion
of Cornelius, was completely mistaken as to the true nature of the
Christian dispensation. They regarded it, not as the new and final
revelation which was to supersede all others; they thought of it
merely as a new sect within the bounds of Judaism.
[96] See an interesting letter from St. Augustine to St. Jerome on
this question in the _Letters_ of St. Augustine (Clark's edition),
vol. i., pp. 30-2. With which compare Bishop Lightfoot on
_Galatians_, p. 128.
[97] _Cf._ Acts xx. 25; 1 Tim. i. 3, iii. 14, iv. 13; 2 Tim. i.
18. St. Paul's address to the Ephesian elder was delivered in the
spring of 58 A.D. He twice revisited Ephesus, six years later, in
64 A.D. See Lewin's _Fasti Sacri_, pp. 314, 334,--a book of
marvellous learning and research, which every critical student of
the Acts should possess, together with the same author's _Life of
St. Paul_.
It was a similar mistake which led to the community of goods. We can
trace the genesis and upgrowth of the idea. It cannot be denied that
the earliest Christians expected the immediate return of Christ. This
expectation brought with it a very natural paralysis of business life
and activity. We have seen the same result happening again and again.
At Thessalonica St. Paul had to deal with it, as we have already noted
in the second of these lectures. Some of the Thessalonians laboured
under a misunderstanding as to St. Paul's true teaching: they thought
that Jesus Christ was immediately about to appear, and they gave up
work and labour under the pretence of preparing for His second coming.
Then St. Paul comes sharply down upon this false practical deduction
which they had drawn from his teaching, and proclaims the law, "If any
man will not work, neither shall he eat." We have already spoken of
the danger which might attend such a time. Here we behold another
danger which did practically ensue and bring forth evil fruit. The
first Christian Pentecost and the days succeeding it were a period of
strained expectation, a season of intense religious excitement, which
naturally led to the community of goods. There was no apostolic rule
or law laid down in the matter. It seems to have been a course of
action to which the converts spontaneously resorted, as the logical
deduction from two principles which they held; first, their
brotherhood and union in Christ; secondly, the nearness of Christ's
second advent. The time was short. The Master had passed into the
invisible world whence He would shortly reappear. Why should they not
then, as brethren in Christ, have one common purse, and spend the
whole time in waiting and watching for that loved presence? This seems
a natural explanation of the origin of a line of policy which has been
often appealed to in the practical life of modern Europe as an example
for modern Christians; and yet, when we examine it more closely, we
can see that this book of the Acts of the Apostles, while it tells of
their mistake, carries with it the correction of the error into which
these earliest disciples fell.[98] The community of goods was adopted
in no other Church. At Corinth, Ephesus, Rome, we hear nothing of it
in those primitive times. No Christian sect or Church has ever tried
to revive it, save the monastic orders, who adopted it for the special
purpose of completely cutting their members off from any connection
with the world of life and action; and, in later times still, the wild
fanatical Anabaptists at the Reformation period, who thought, like the
Christians of Jerusalem, that the kingdom of God, as they fancied it,
was immediately about to appear.[99] The Church of Jerusalem, as the
apostolic history shows us, reaped the natural results of this false
step. They adopted the principles of communism; they lost hold of that
principle of individual life and exertion which lies at the very root
of all civilisation and all advancement, and they fell, as the natural
result, into the direst poverty. There was no reason in the nature of
its composition why the Jerusalem Church should have been more
poverty-stricken than the Churches of Ephesus, Philippi, or Corinth.
Slaves and very humble folk constituted the staple of these Churches.
At Jerusalem a great company of the priests were obedient to the
faith, and the priests were, as a class, in easy circumstances. Slaves
cannot at Jerusalem have constituted that large element of the Church
which they did in the great Greek and Roman cities, simply because
slavery never reached among the Jews the same development as in the
Gentile world. The Jews, as a nation, were a people among whom there
was a widely diffused comfort, and the earliest Church at Jerusalem
must have fairly represented the nation. There was nothing to make the
mother Church of Christendom that pauper community we find it to have
been all through St. Paul's ministry, save the one initial mistake,
which doubtless the Church authorities found it very hard afterwards
to retrieve; for when men get into the habit of living upon alms it is
very difficult to restore the habits of healthy independence.
[98] The communism of the early Christians was not a novel notion.
The Essenes, a curious Jewish sect of that time, had long
practised it; see Bishop Lightfoot's essay on the Essenes in his
commentary on Colossians, 3rd ed., p. 416. Josephus, in his
_Antiqq._, XVIII., i., 5, and in his _Wars_, II., viii., 3,
describes the communism of the Essenes in language that would
exactly apply to that of the early Christians. Thus in the latter
place he says: "These men are despisers of riches, and so very
communicative as raises our admiration. Nor is there to be found
any one among them who hath more than another; for it is a law
among them, that those who come to them must let what they have be
common to the whole order; insomuch that among them all there is
no appearance of poverty or excess of riches, but every one's
possessions are intermingled with every other's possessions, and
so there is, as it were, one patrimony among all the brethren."
[99] The thirty-eighth Article of the Church of England is
directed against the Anabaptist theory. A paralysis of ordinary
life and action was temporarily produced at Jerusalem after the
day of Pentecost. This quickly led to the community of goods, with
its evil results. The paralysis produced at Jerusalem by the
excitement and expectation of those early days was reproduced in
this century at the time when Irvingism and Plymouthism took their
first rise, some sixty years ago. The best illustration of the
practical effects of such one-sided spiritual expectation will be
found in a book forgotten by this generation, _The Letters and
Papers of Lady Powerscourt_, published in 1838. She was eminent in
the religious world of her day, and was intimately mixed up with
the prophetical movement out of which Irvingism and Plymouthism
were developed. The fundamental doctrine of both these sects was
the immediate personal appearance and reign of Christ on earth.
Lady Powerscourt's correspondence shows the results on an ardent
mind of such an idea. She gave up society, separated herself from
the world in a hermit's cottage at Lough Bray in the deepest
recesses of the Wicklow Mountains, and there occupied herself in
writing to her friends exhortations to cease from life's work,
such as the following, which we find on p. 235: "There is much
seemingly to be said for the things of this world being sanctified
to heavenly uses; yet I cannot help feeling more and more assured
every day that a divorce must take place,--that God and the world
cannot be joined,--that it behoves us to make plain that we are
the risen ones by our portion not being in any degree from
hence,--that we are not struggling upwards through mire and dirt,
but we are as let down from heaven. We take our stand in the
kingdom of heaven, looking from above at earth, not from earth at
heaven." When people begin to "look from above at earth," the step
to communism is not a long one. Vast numbers of persons never
recovered themselves from the strain of that time (A. D. 1830),
but remained all their lives in a state of dreamy disappointment.
I have enlarged on this subject in an article on J. N. Darby in
the _Contemporary Review_ for 1885.
II. This incident is, however, rich in teaching for the Church of
every age, and that in very various directions. It is a significant
warning for the mission field. Missionary Churches should strive after
a healthy independence amongst their members. It is, of course,
absolutely necessary that missionaries should strive to supply
temporal employment to their converts in places and under
circumstances where a profession of Christianity cuts them off at once
from all communication with their old friends and neighbours. The
primitive Church found it necessary to give such temporal relief, and
yet had to guard against its abuse; and we have been far too remiss in
looking for guidance to those early centuries when the whole Church
was necessarily one great missionary organization. The Apostolic
Canons and Constitutions are documents which throw much light on many
questions which now press for solution in the mission field. They
pretend to be the exact words of the Apostles, but are evidently the
work of a later age. They date back in their present shape, at latest,
to the third or fourth centuries, as is evident from the fact that
they contain elaborate rules for the treatment of martyrs and
confessors,--and there were no martyrs after that time,--directing
that every effort should be made to render them comfort, support, and
sympathy. These Constitutions prove that the Church in the third
century was one mighty co-operative institution, and an important
function of the bishop was the direction of that co-operation. The
second chapter of the fourth book of the Apostolic Constitution lays
down, "Do you therefore, O bishops, be solicitous about the
maintenance of orphans, being in nothing wanting to them; exhibiting
to the orphans the care of parents; to the widows the care of
husbands; to the artificer, work; to the stranger, an house; to the
hungry, food; to the thirsty, drink; to the naked, clothing; to the
sick, visitation, to the prisoners, assistance." But these same
Constitutions recognise equally clearly the danger involved in such a
course. The wisdom of the early Church saw and knew how easily alms
promiscuously bestowed sap the roots of independence, and taught
therefore, with equal explicitness, the absolute necessity for
individual exertion, the duty of Christian toil and labour; urging the
example of the Apostles themselves, as in the sixty-third Constitution
of the second book, where they are represented as exhorting, "Let the
young persons of the Church endeavour to minister diligently in all
necessaries; mind your business with all becoming seriousness, that so
you may always have sufficient to support yourselves and those that
are needy, and not burden the Church of God. For we ourselves, besides
our attention to the Word of the Gospel, do not neglect our inferior
employments; for some of us are fishermen, some tent-makers, some
husbandmen, that so we may never be idle." In the modern mission field
there will often be occasions when, as in ancient times, the
profession of Christianity and the submission of the converts to
baptism will involve the loss of all things.[100] And, under such
circumstances, Christian love, such as burned of old in the hearts of
God's people and led them to enact the rules we have now quoted, will
still lead and compel the Church in its organized capacity to lend
temporal assistance to those that are in danger of starvation for
Christ's sake; but no missionary effort can be in a healthy condition
where all, or the greater portion, of the converts are so dependent
upon the funds of the mission that if the funds were withdrawn the
apparent results would vanish into thin air. Such missions are utterly
unlike the missions of the apostolic Church; for the converts of the
apostolic age were made by men who went forth without purse or scrip,
who could not give temporal assistance even had they desired to do so,
and whose great object ever was to develop in their followers a
healthy spirit of Christian manliness and honest independence.
[100] An interesting illustration of ancient missionary work and
its likeness to modern efforts turned up a few years ago among the
Fayûm papyri. It was a document containing the curse pronounced by
a pagan mother upon her son who had turned Christian, solemnly
cutting him off from his kith and kin. It will be found in a
translated shape in the _Transactions_ of the Society of Biblical
Archæology for 1884, Part I. Modern converts, too, just like the
ancient, have often to suffer the loss of all things for Christ's
sake.
III. Then, again, this passage teaches a much-needed lesson to the
Church at home about the methods of poor relief and almsgiving.
"Blessed," says the Psalmist, "is he that considereth the poor." He
does not say, "Blessed is he that giveth money to the poor," but,
"Blessed is he that considereth the poor." Well-directed, wise,
prudent almsgiving is a good and beneficial thing, but indiscriminate
almsgiving, almsgiving bestowed without care, thought, and
consideration such as the Psalmist suggests, brings with it far more
evil than it prevents. The Church of Jerusalem very soon had
experience of these evils. Jealousies and quarrels soon sprang up even
where Apostles were ministering and the supernatural gifts of the
Spirit were present,--"There arose a murmuring of the Grecians against
the Hebrews because their widows were neglected in the daily
ministrations;" and it has been ever since the experience of those
called to deal with questions of temporal relief and the distribution
of alms, that no classes are more suspicious and more quarrelsome than
those who are in receipt of such assistance. The chaplains and
managers of almshouses, asylums, charitable funds, and workhouses know
this to their cost, and ofttimes make a bitter acquaintance with that
evil spirit which burst forth even in the mother Church of Jerusalem.
Time necessarily hangs heavy upon the recipients' hands, forethought
and care are removed and cease to engage the mind, and people having
nothing else to do begin to quarrel. But this was not the only evil
which arose: hypocrisy and ostentation, as in the case of Ananias and
Sapphira, deceit, thriftlessness, and idleness showed themselves at
Jerusalem, Thessalonica, and other places, as the Epistles of St. Paul
amply testify. And so it has been in the experience of the modern
Church. I know myself of whole districts where almsgiving has quite
demoralised the poor and eaten the heart out of their religion, so
that they value religious ministrations, not for the sake of the
religion that is taught, but solely for the sake of the temporal
relief that accompanies it. I know of a district where, owing to the
want of organization in religious effort and the shattered and broken
character of Protestant Christianity, the poor people are visited and
relieved by six or seven competing religious communities, so that a
clever person can make a very fair income by a judicious manipulation
of the different visitors. It is evident that such visitations are
doing evil instead of good, and the labour and money expended are
worse than useless. The proper organization of charitable relief is
one of the desirable objects the Church should set before it. The
great point to be aimed at should be not so much the ministration of
direct assistance to the people as the development of the spirit of
self-help. And here comes in the action of the Christian State. The
institution of the Post Office Savings Bank, where the State
guarantees the safety of the depositor's money, seems a direct
exposition and embodiment of the principle which underlay the
community of goods in the apostolic Church. That principle was a
generous, unselfish, Christlike principle. The principle was right,
though the particular shape which the principle took was a mistaken
one. Experience has taught the Church of Christ a wiser course, and
now the system of State-guaranteed Savings Banks enables the Church to
lead the poor committed to her care into wiser courses. Parochial and
congregational Savings Banks ought to be attached to all Christian
organizations, so as to teach the poor the industrial lessons which
they need. We have known a district in a most thriftless
neighbourhood, where immense sums used to be wasted in indiscriminate
almsgiving, and yet where the people, like the woman in the Gospels,
were never one whit the better, but rather grew worse. We have seen
such a district, in the course of a few years, quite regenerated in
temporal matters, simply by the action of what is called a parochial
Penny Savings Bank. Previously to its institution the slightest fall
of snow brought heart-rending appeals for coal funds, blankets, and
food; while a few years of its operation banished coal funds and
pauperism in every shape, simply by teaching the people the magic law
of thrift, and by developing within them the love and the power of
self-respecting and industrious independence. And yet efforts in this
direction will not be destructive of Christian charity. They tend not
to dry up the springs of Christian love. Charity is indeed a blessing
to the giver, and we should never desire to see the opportunity
wanting for its display. Ill indeed would be the world's state if we
had no longer the poor, the sick, the needy with us. Our sinful human
nature requires its unselfish powers to be kept in action, or else it
quickly subsides into a state of unwholesome stagnation. Poor people
need to be taught habits of saving, and this teaching will require
time, and trouble, and expense. The clergy and their congregations may
teach the poor thrift by offering a much higher interest than the Post
Office supplies, while, at the same time, the funds are all deposited
in the State Savings Bank. That higher interest will often demand as
much money as the doles previously bestowed in the shape of mere gifts
of coal and food. But then what a difference in the result! The mere
dole has, for the most part, a demoralising tendency, while the money
spent in the other direction permanently elevates and blesses.[101]
[101] It is not generally known that the Post Office offers
special facilities for the establishment of such Penny Savings
Banks as I advocate. The Post Office will supply books for
depositors and permit a deposit account to be opened without any
limit. I have seen in my own parish the beneficial working of such
an institution, increasing annually in its results for the last
twenty years.
IV. But there is a more important lesson still to be derived from this
incident in the apostolic Church. The community of goods failed in
that Church when tried under the most favourable circumstances,
terminating in the permanent degradation of the Christian community at
Jerusalem; just as similar efforts must ever fail, no matter how broad
the field on which they may be tried or how powerful the forces which
may be arrayed on their behalf. Christian legislatures of our own age
may learn a lesson of warning against perilous experiments in a
communistic direction from the disastrous failure in Jerusalem; and
there is a real danger in this respect from the tendency of human
nature to rush to extremes. Protestantism and the Reformation
accentuated the individual and individual independence. The feeling
thus taught in religion reacted on the world of life and action,
developing an intensity of individualism in the political world which
paralysed the efforts which the State alone could make in the various
matters of sanitary education and social reform. In the last
generation Maurice and Kingsley and men of their school raised in
opposition the banner of Christian socialism, because they saw clearly
that men had run too far in the direction of individualism,--so far,
indeed, that they were inclined to forget the great lesson taught by
Christianity, that under the new law we are members one of another,
and that all members belong to one body, and that body is Christ. Men
are so narrow that they can for the most part take only one view at a
time, and so now they are inclined to push Christian socialism to the
same extreme as at Jerusalem, and to forget that there is a great
truth in individualism as there is another great truth in Christian
socialism. Dr. Newman in his valuable but almost forgotten work on
the Prophetical Office of the Church defined the position of the
English Church as being a _Media Via_, a mean between two extremes.
Whatever may be said upon other topics, the office of the Christian
Church is most certainly a _Via Media_, a mean between the two
opposite extremes of socialism and individualism. Much good has been
effected of late years by legislation based upon essentially
socialistic ideas. Reformatory and industrial schools, to take but one
instance, are socialistic in their foundations and in their
tendencies. The whole body of the State undertakes in them
responsibilities and duties which God intended individuals to
discharge, but which individuals persistently neglect, to the injury
of their innocent offspring, and of society at large. Yet even in this
simple experiment we can see the germs of the same evils which sprang
up at Jerusalem. We have seen this tendency appearing in connection
with the Industrial School system, and have known parents who could
educate and train their children in family life encouraged by this
well-intentioned legislation to fling their responsibilities over upon
the State, and neglecting their offspring because they were convinced
that in doing so they were not only saving their own pockets but also
doing better for their children than they themselves could. It is just
the same, and has ever been the same, with all similar legislation. It
requires to be most narrowly watched. Human nature is intensely lazy
and intensely selfish. God has laid down the law of individual effort
and individual responsibility, and while we should strive against the
abuses of that law, we should watch with equal care against the
opposite abuses. Foundling hospitals as they were worked in the last
century, for instance, form an object-lesson of the dangers inherent
in such methods of action. Benevolent persons in the last century
pitied the condition of poor children left as foundlings. There was,
some sixty years ago, an institution in Dublin of this kind, which was
supported by the State. There was a box into which an infant could be
placed at any hour of the day or night; a bell was rung, and by the
action of a turn-stile the infant was received into the institution.
But experience soon taught the same lesson as at Jerusalem. The
Foundling Hospital may have temporarily relieved some deserving cases
and occasionally prevented some very painful scenes, but the broad
results upon society at large were so bad, immorality was so
increased, the sense of parental responsibility was so weakened, that
the State was compelled to terminate its existence at a very large
expense. Socialism when pushed to an extreme must necessarily work out
in bad results, and that because there is one constant and fixed
quantity which the socialist forgets. Human nature changes not; human
nature is corrupt and must remain corrupt until the end, and so long
as the corruption of human nature remains the best-conceived plans of
socialism must necessarily fail.
Yet the Jerusalem idea of a voluntary community of goods was a noble
one, and sprang from an unselfish root. It was purely voluntary
indeed. There was no compulsion upon any to adopt it. "Not one of them
said that aught that he possessed was his own," is St. Luke's
testimony on the point. "While it remained, did it not remain thine
own? And after it was sold, was it not in thy power?" are St. Peter's
words, clearly testifying that this Christian communism was simply the
result and outcome of loving hearts who, under the influence of an
overmastering emotion, had cast prudence to the winds. The communism
of Jerusalem may have been unwise, but it was the proof of generous
and devout spirits. It was an attempt, too, to realize the conditions
of the new life in the new heaven and the new earth wherein dwelleth
righteousness, while still the old heaven and the old earth remained.
It was an enthusiasm, a high, a holy, and a noble enthusiasm; and
though it failed in some respects, still the enthusiasm begotten of
fervent Christian love succeeded in another direction, for it enabled
the Apostles "with great power to give witness to the resurrection of
the Lord Jesus." The union of these two points in the sacred narrative
has profound spiritual teaching for the Church of Christ.
Unselfishness in worldly things, enthusiasm about the kingdom of
Christ, fervent love to the brethren, are brought into nearest contact
and united in closest bonds with the possession of special spiritual
power over the hearts of the unbelievers. And then, again, the
unselfishness existed amongst the body of the Church, the mass of the
people at large. We are sure that the Apostles were leaders in the
acts of self-denial. No great work is carried out where the natural
and divinely-sent leaders hang back. But it is the love and enthusiasm
of the mass of the people which excite St. Luke's notice, and which he
illustrates by the contrasted cases of Barnabas and Ananias; and he
connects this unselfish enthusiasm of the people with the possession
of great power by the Apostles. Surely we can read a lesson suitable
for the Church of all ages in this collocation. The law of interaction
prevails between clergy and people still as it did between the
Apostles and people of old. The true minister of Christ will
frequently bear before the throne of God those souls with whom the
Holy Ghost has entrusted him, and without such personal intercession
he cannot expect real success in his work. But then, on the other
hand, this passage suggests to us that enthusiasm, fervent faith,
unselfish love on the people's part are the conditions of ministerial
power with human souls. A people filled with Christ's love, and
abounding in enthusiasm, even by a mere natural process produce power
in their leaders, for the hearts of the same leaders beat quicker and
their tongues speak more forcibly because they feel behind them the
immense motive power of hallowed faith and sacred zeal. But we believe
in a still higher blessing. When people are unselfish, brimming over
with generous Christian love, it calls down a supernatural, a Divine
power. The Pentecostal Spirit of love again descends, and in roused
hearts and converted souls and purified and consecrated intellects
rewards with a blessing such as they desire the men and women who long
for the salvation of their brethren, and are willing, like these
apostolic Christians, to sacrifice their dearest and their best for
it.