'We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.'--ACTS
iv. 20.
The context tells us that the Jewish Council were surprised, as they
well might be, at the boldness of Peter and John, and traced it to
their having been with Jesus. But do you remember that they were by no
means bold when they were with Jesus, and that the bravery came after
what, in ordinary circumstances, would have destroyed any of it in a
man? A leader's execution is not a usual recipe for heartening his
followers, but it had that effect in this case, and the Peter who was
frightened out of all his heroics by a sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued
servant-maid, a few weeks after bearded the Council and 'rejoiced that
he was counted worthy to suffer shame for His Name.' It was not
Christ's death that did that, and it was not His life that did that.
You cannot understand, to use a long word, the 'psychological'
transformation of these cowardly deniers who fled and forsook Him,
unless you bring in three things: Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost.
Then it is explicable.
However the boldness came; these two men before the Council were making
an epoch at that moment, and their grand words are the Magna Charta of
the right of every sincere conviction to free speech. They are the
direct parent of hundreds of similar sayings that flash out down the
world's history. Two things Peter and John adduced as making silence
impossible--a definite divine command, and an inward impulse. 'Whether
it is right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God,
judge ye. We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.'
But I wish to use these words now in a somewhat wider application. They
may suggest that there are great facts which make silence and
non-aggressiveness an impossibility for an individual or a Church, and
that by the very law of its being, a Church must be a missionary
Church, and a Christian cannot be a dumb Christian, unless he is a dead
Christian. And so I turn to look at these words as suggesting to us two
or three of the grounds on which Christian effort, in some form or
another, is inseparable from Christian experience.