Look at that eloquent 'but' in the verse that I have taken as a
starting-point: 'Peter therefore was kept in prison, _but_ prayer was
made earnestly of the Church unto God for him.' There is another
similarly eloquent 'but' at the end of the chapter:
'Herod ... was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost, _but_ the Word of
God grew and multiplied.' Here you get, on the one hand, all the
pompous and elaborate preparations--'four quaternions of
soldiers'--four times four is sixteen--sixteen soldiers, two chains,
three gates with guards at each of them, Herod's grim determination,
the people's malicious expectation of having an execution as a pleasant
sensation with which to wind up the Passover Feast. And what had the
handful of Christian people? Well, they had prayer; and they had Jesus
Christ. That was all, and that is more than enough. How ridiculous all
the preparation looks when you let the light of that great 'but' in
upon it! Prayer, earnest prayer, 'was made of the Church unto God for
him.' And evidently, from the place in which that fact is stated, it is
intended that we should say to ourselves that it was _because_ prayer
was made for him that what came to pass did come to pass. It is not
jerked out as an unconnected incident; it is set in a logical sequence.
'Prayer was made earnestly of the Church unto God for him'--and so
when Herod would have brought him forth, behold, the angel of the Lord
came, and the light shined into the prison. It is the same sequence of
thought that occurs in that grand theophany in the eighteenth Psalm,
'My cry entered into His ears; then the earth shook and trembled'; and
there came all the magnificence of the thunderstorm and the earthquake
and the divine manifestation; and this was the purpose of it all--'He
sent from above, He took me, He drew me out of many waters.' The whole
energy of the divine nature is set in motion and comes swooping down
from highest heaven to the trembling earth. And of that fact the one
end is one poor man's cry, and the other end is his deliverance. The
moving spring of the divine manifestation was an individual's prayer;
the aim of it was the individual's deliverance. A little water is put
into a hydraulic ram at the right place, and the outcome is the lifting
of tons. So the helpless men who could only pray are stronger than
Herod and his quaternions and his chains and his gates. 'Prayer was
made,' therefore all that happened was brought to pass, and Peter was
delivered.
Peter's companion, James, was killed off, as we read in a verse or two
before. Did not the Church pray for him? Surely they did. Why was their
prayer not answered, then? God has not any step-children. James was as
dear to God as Peter was. One prayer was answered; was the other left
unanswered? It was the divine purpose that Peter, being prayed for,
should be delivered; and we may reverently say that, if there had not
been the many in Mary's house praying, there would have been no angel
in Peter's cell.
So here are revealed the strength of the weak, the armour of the
unarmed, the defence of the defenceless. If the Christian Church in its
times of persecution and affliction had kept itself to the one weapon
that is allowed it, it would have been more conspicuously victorious.
And if we, in our individual lives--where, indeed, we have to do
something else besides pray--would remember the lesson of that eloquent
'but,' we should be less frequently brought to perplexity and reduced
to something bordering on despair. So my first lesson is the strength
of the weak.