'Men ... full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom.' ... 'A man full of faith
and of the Holy Ghost....' 'Stephen, full of faith and power.'--ACTS
vi. 3, 5, 8.
I have taken the liberty of wrenching these three fragments from their
context, because of their remarkable parallelism, which is evidently
intended to set us thinking of the connection of the various
characteristics which they set forth. The first of them is a
description, given by the Apostles, of the sort of man whom they
conceived to be fit to look after the very homely matter of stifling
the discontent of some members of the Church, who thought that their
poor people did not get their fair share of the daily ministration. The
second and third of them are parts of the description of the foremost
of these seven men, the martyr Stephen. In regard to the first and
second of our three fragmentary texts, you will observe that the cause
is put first and the effect second. The 'deacons' were to be men 'full
of the Holy Ghost,' and that would make them 'full of wisdom.' Stephen
was 'full of faith,' and that made him 'full of the Holy Ghost.'
Probably the same relation subsists in the third of our texts, of which
the true reading is not, as it appears in our Authorised Version, 'full
of faith and power,' but as it is given in the Revised Version, 'full
of grace and power.' He was filled with grace--by which apparently is
here meant the sum of the divine spiritual gifts--and therefore he was
full of power. Whether that is so or not, if we link these three
passages together, as I have taken the liberty of doing, we get a point
of view appropriate for such a day [Footnote: Preached on Whit Sunday.]
as this, when all that calls itself Christendom is commemorating the
descent of the Holy Spirit, and His abiding influence upon the Church.
So I simply wish to gather together the principles that come out of
these three verses thus concatenated.