_THE PETRINE VISION AT JOPPA._
"Now on the morrow, as they were on their journey, and drew nigh
unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray, about the
sixth hour: and he became hungry, and desired to eat: but while
they made ready, he fell into a trance; and he beholdeth the
heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending, as it were a
great sheet, let down by four corners upon the earth: wherein
were all manner of fourfooted beasts and creeping things of the
earth and fowls of the heaven. And there came a voice to him,
Rise, Peter; kill and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I
have never eaten anything that is common and unclean. And a voice
came unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, make
not thou common."--ACTS x. 9-15.
There are two central figures in the conversion of Cornelius. The one
is the centurion himself, the other is St. Peter, the selected and
predestined agent in that great work. We have studied Cornelius in the
last chapter, and have seen the typical character of all his
circumstances. His time, his residence, his training, had all been
providential, indicating to us the careful superintendence, the
watchful oversight, which God bestows upon the history of individuals
as well as of the Church at large. Let us now turn to the other
figure, St. Peter, and see if the Lord's providence may not be traced
with equal clearness in the circumstances of his case also. We have
found Cornelius at Cæsarea, the great Roman port and garrison of
Palestine, a very fitting and natural place for a Roman centurion to
be located. We find Peter at this very same time at Joppa, a spot
that was consecrated by many a memory and specially associated with a
mission to the Gentiles in the times of the Elder Dispensation. Here
we trace the hand of the Lord providentially ruling the footsteps of
Peter though he knew it not, and leading him, as Philip was led a
short time before, to the spot where his intended work lay. The
sickness and death of Tabitha or Dorcas led St. Peter to Joppa. The
fame of his miracle upon that devout woman led to the conversion of
many souls, and this naturally induced Peter to make a longer stay in
Joppa at the house of Simon the tanner. How natural and
unpremeditated, how very ordinary and unplanned to the natural eye
seem the movements of St. Peter! So they would have seemed to us had
we been living at Joppa, and yet now we can see with the light which
the sacred narrative throws upon the story that the Lord was guiding
St. Peter to the place where his work was cut out when the appointed
time should come. Surely the history of Peter and his actions have
abundant comfort and sustaining hope for ourselves! Our lives may be
very ordinary and commonplace; the events may succeed one another in
the most matter-of-fact style; there may seem in them nothing at all
worthy the attention of a Divine Ruler; and yet those ordinary lives
are just as much planned and guided by supernatural wisdom as the
careers of men concerning whom all the world is talking. Only let us
take care to follow St. Peter's example. He yielded himself completely
to the Divine guidance, trusted himself entirely to Divine love and
wisdom, and then found in such trust not only life and safety, but
what is far better, perfect peace and sweetest calm.
There is something very restful in the picture drawn for us of St.
Peter at this crisis. There is none of that feverish hurry and
restlessness which make some good men and their methods very trying to
others. The notices of him have all an air of repose and Christian
dignity. "As Peter went throughout all parts, he came down also to the
saints which dwelt at Lydda"; "Peter put them all forth and prayed";
"Peter abode many days in Joppa"; "Peter went up upon the housetop to
pray about the sixth hour." St. Peter, indeed, did not live in an age
of telegrams and postcards and express trains, which all contribute
more or less to that feverish activity and restlessness so
characteristic of this age. But even if he had lived in such a time, I
am sure his faith in God would have saved him from that fussiness,
that life of perpetual hurry, yet never bringing forth any abiding
fruit, which we behold in so many moderns. This results a good deal, I
believe, from the development--I was almost going to say the tyranny,
the unwitting tyranny of modern journalism, which compels men to live
so much in public and reports their every utterance. There are men
never tired of running from one committee to another, and never weary
of seeing their names in the morning papers. They count that they have
been busily and usefully employed if their names are perpetually
appearing in newspaper reports as speaking, or at any rate being
present at innumerable meetings, leaving themselves no time for that
quiet meditation whereby St. Peter gained closest communion with
heaven. It is no wonder such men's fussiness should be fruitless,
because their natures are poor, shallow, uncultivated, where the seed
springs up rapidly but brings forth no fruit to perfection, because it
has no deepness of earth. It is no wonder that St. Peter should have
spoken with power at Cæsarea and been successful in opening the door
of faith to the Gentiles, because he prepared himself for doing the
Divine work by the discipline of meditation and thought and spiritual
converse with his Risen Lord. And here we may remark, before we pass
from this point, that the conversion of the first Gentile and the full
and complete exercise of the power of the keys committed to St. Peter
run on lines very parallel to those pertaining to the Day of Pentecost
and the conversion of the earliest Jews in one respect at least. The
Day of Pentecost was preceded by a period of ten days' waiting and
spiritual repose. The conversion of Cornelius and the revelation of
God's purposes to St. Peter were preceded by a season of meditation
and prayer, when an apostle could find time amid all his pressing
cares to seek the housetop for midday prayer and to abide many days in
the house of one Simon a tanner. A period of pause, repose, and
quietness preceded a new onward movement of development and of action.
I. Now, as in the case of Cornelius, so in the case of St. Peter, we
note the _place_ where the chief actor in the scene abode. It was at
Joppa, and Joppa was associated with many memories for the Jews. It
has been from ancient times the port of Jerusalem, and is even now
rising into somewhat of its former commercial greatness, specially
owing to the late development of the orange trade, for the production
of which fruit Jaffa or Joppa has become famous. Three thousand years
ago Joppa was a favourite resort of the Phœnician fleets, which
brought the cedars of Lebanon to King Solomon for the building of the
temple (2 Chron. ii. 16). At a later period, when God would send Jonah
on a mission to Gentile Nineveh, and when Jonah desired to thwart
God's merciful designs towards the outer world, the prophet fled to
Joppa and there took ship in his vain effort to escape from the
presence of the Lord. And now again Joppa becomes the refuge of
another prophet, who feels the same natural hesitation about admitting
the Gentiles to God's mercy, but who, unlike Jonah, yields immediate
assent to the heavenly message, and finds peace and blessing in the
paths of loving obedience. The very house where St. Peter abode is
still pointed out.[75] It is situated in the south-western part of the
town, and commands a view over the bay of Joppa and the waters of that
Mediterranean Sea which was soon to be the channel of communication
whereby the gospel message should be borne to the nations of the
distant West. We remark, too, that it was with Simon the tanner of
Joppa that St. Peter was staying. When a great change is impending
various little circumstances occur all showing the tendencies of the
age. By themselves and taken one by one they do not express much. At
the time when they happen men do not regard them or understand their
meaning, but afterwards, and reading them in the light of accomplished
facts, men behold their significance. Thus it was with Simon Peter and
his visit to Simon the tanner of Joppa. Tanners as a class were
despised and comparatively outcast among the Jews. Tanning was counted
an unclean trade because of the necessary contact with dead bodies
which it involved. A tanyard must, according to Jewish law, be
separated by fifty yards at least from human dwellings. If a man
married a woman without informing her of his trade as a tanner, she
was granted a divorce. The whole trade of tanners was under a ban, and
yet it was to a tanner's house that the Apostle made his way, and
there he lodged for many days, showing that the mind even of St. Peter
was steadily rising above narrow Jewish prejudices into that higher
and nobler atmosphere where he learned in fullest degree that no man
and no lawful trade is to be counted common or unclean.
[75] The house of Simon the tanner is depicted in Lewin's _St.
Paul_, vol. i., pp. 87, 88. There is a good description of it, as
also of Joppa at large, in Geikie's _The Holy Land and the Bible_,
vol. i., p. 18, from which we take the following: "On the south
side of the town, at the edge of the sea, close to the lighthouse,
one is reminded of the visit of St. Peter to Joppa by the claim of
a paltry mosque to occupy the house of Simon the tanner. The
present building is comparatively modern, and cannot be the actual
structure in which the Apostle lodged. It is, however, regarded by
the Mohammedans as sacred, one of the rooms being used as a place
of prayer in commemoration, we are told, of the Lord Jesus having
once asked God, while here, for a meal; on which a table forthwith
came down from heaven. Strange variation of the story of St.
Peter's vision! The waves beat against the low wall of the
courtyard, so that, like the actual house of Simon, it is close on
the sea-shore. Tanning, moreover, in accordance with the
unchanging character of the East, is still extensively carried on
in this part of the town."
II. We note, again, the _time_ when the vision was granted to St.
Peter and the mind of the Lord was more fully disclosed to him. Joppa
is separated from Cæsarea by a distance of thirty miles. The leading
coast towns were then connected by an excellent road, along which
horses and vehicles passed with ease. The centurion Cornelius, when he
received the angelic direction, forthwith despatched two of his
household servants and a devout soldier to summon St. Peter to his
presence. They doubtless travelled on horseback, leading spare beasts
for the accommodation of the Apostle. Less than twenty-four hours
after their departure from Cæsarea they drew nigh to Joppa, and then
it was that God revealed His purposes to His beloved servant. The very
hour can be fixed. Cornelius saw the angel at the ninth hour, when, as
he himself tells us, "he was keeping the hour of prayer" (x. 30).
Peter saw the vision at the sixth hour, when he went up on the house
top to pray, according to the example of the Psalmist when he sang,
"In the evening and morning and at noon-day will I pray, and that
instantly."[76] St. Peter evidently was a careful observer of all the
forms amid which his youthful training had been conducted. He did not
seek in the name of spiritual religion to discard these old forms. He
recognised the danger of any such course. Forms may often tend to
formalism on account of the weakness of human nature. But they also
help to preserve and guard the spirit of ancient institutions in times
of sloth and decay, till the Spirit from on high again breathes upon
the dry bones and imparts fresh life. St. Peter used the forms of
Jewish externalism, imparting to them some of his own intense
earnestness, and the Lord set His seal of approval upon his action by
revealing the purposes of His mercy and love to the Gentile world at
the noontide hour of prayer. The wisest masters of the spiritual life
have ever followed St. Peter's teaching. We may take, for instance,
Dr. Goulburn in his valuable treatise on Personal Religion. In the
sixth chapter of the fourth part of that work he has some wise
thoughts on living by rule in the Christian life, where he points out
the use of rules and their abuse, strongly urging upon those who
desire to grow in grace the formation of rules by which the practices
of religion and the soul's inner life may be directed and shielded.
There is, for instance, no law of Christ which ties men down to
morning and evening prayer. Yet does not our own daily experience
teach that, if this unwritten rule of the Christian life be relaxed
under the pretence of higher spirituality, and men pray only when they
feel specially inclined to communion with the unseen, the whole
practice of private as well as of public prayer ceases, and the soul
lives in an atheistic atmosphere without any recognition or thought of
God.[77] This danger has been recognised from the earliest times.
Tertullian was a man of narrow views, but of the most intense piety.
He was a devout student of the New Testament, and a careful observer
of the example of our Lord and His Apostles. The early Christians
adopted from the Jews the custom of prayer at the various hours of the
day, and turned it into a practical rule of Christian discipline,
acknowledging at the same time that there was no Scriptural obligation
in the rule, but that it was a mere wise advice for the development of
the spiritual life. This was the origin of what is technically called
the Canonical Hours, Matins with Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, Nones,
Evensong, and Compline, which can be traced back in germ to the age
next after the Apostles, and were originally grounded upon the example
of the Apostles themselves, and specially upon that of St. Peter's
practice at Joppa. Let us hear Tertullian on this matter. He wrote a
treatise on prayer, in which he presses upon the men of his time the
duty of earnestness and intensity in that holy exercise, and when
doing so touches upon this very point: "As respecting the time of
prayer the observance of certain hours will not be unprofitable--those
common hours I mean which mark the intervals of the day--the third,
sixth, ninth--which we find in Scripture to have been made more solemn
than the rest. The first infusion of the Holy Spirit into the
congregated disciples took place at the third hour. Peter saw his
vision on the housetop at the sixth hour. Peter and John went into the
Temple at the ninth hour when he restored the paralytic to his
health." Tertullian then adds the following wise observations, showing
that he quite grasped the essential distinction between the slavery of
the law and the freedom of the gospel in the matter of external
observances: "Albeit these practices stand simply without any Divine
precept for their observance; still it may be granted a good thing to
establish some definite rule which may both add stringency to the
admonition to pray and may as it were by a law tear us out of our
ordinary business unto such a duty. So that we pray not less than
thrice in the day, debtors as we are to Three--Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit--besides of course our regular prayers on the entrance of light
and of night." The ecclesiastical practice of the Hours may be turned
into a mere formal repetition of certain prescribed tasks; but, like
all other ordinances which trace themselves back to primitive
Christianity, the Hours are based on a true conception and a noble
ideal of the prevailing and abounding place which prayer should occupy
in the soul's life, according to the Saviour's own teaching when He
spake a parable to His disciples to this end that men ought always to
pray and not to faint.[78]
[76] This is the rendering of Psalm lv. 18 according to the
version in the Book of Common Prayer.
[77] A deceased friend of mine, a well-known member of the Society
of Friends, once remarked to me about this very point that his
Society, to which he belonged to his dying day, while aiming at
the highest spirituality, in its neglect of all rules, and
suitable therefore for persons of specially exalted tone, had
rendered itself unfitted for the training of children. Children
cannot be trained without rules, and a society which trusts to
educate them in things religious without fixed and definite
training must be a hopeless failure. The original principles of
"Friends" preclude them from teaching children forms of private
prayer, from using fixed Bible reading and regular religious
instruction, as well as from stated family worship. Efforts have
been made in later times to remedy this effect, but they are
merely confessions of the failure of the principles inculcated by
George Fox and Robert Barclay and acknowledgments that the Church
from which they dissented was right.
[78] Tertullian's treatise on Prayer will be found in Clark's
translation of his works, vol. i., pp. 178-204.
III. We now arrive at the vision which Peter saw upon the housetop.
The Apostle, having ascended upon the housetop commanding a view over
the blue waters of the Mediterranean lying shimmering and sweltering
beneath the rays of the noonday sun, became hungry, as was natural
enough, because the usual time of the midday meal was drawing nigh.
But there was a deeper reason for the Apostle's felt need of
refreshment, and a more immediate providence was watching over his
natural powers and their action than ever before had been revealed.
The natural hunger was divinely inspired in order that just at that
instant when the representatives and delegates of the Gentile world
were drawing nigh to his abode he might be prepared to accord them a
fitting reception. To the mere man of sense or to the mere carnal mind
the hunger of St. Peter may seem a simple natural operation, but to
the devout believer in Christianity, who views it as the great and
perfect revelation of God to man, who knows that His covenants are in
all things well-ordered and sure, and that in His works in grace as
well as in His works in nature the Lord leaves nothing to mere chance,
but perfectly orders them all down to the minutest detail, to such an
one this human hunger of St. Peter's appears as divinely planned in
order that a spiritual satisfaction and completeness may be imparted
to his soul unconsciously craving after a fuller knowledge of the
Divine will. St. Peter's hunger is, in fact, but a manifestation in
the human sphere of that superhuman foresight which was directing the
whole transaction from behind this visible scene; teaching us, in
fact, the lesson so often repeated in Holy Scripture that nothing, not
even our feelings, our infirmities, our passions, our appetites, are
too minute for the Divine love and care, and encouraging us thereby to
act more freely upon the apostolic injunction, "In everything by
prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God." If
St. Peter's hunger were taken up and incorporated with the Divine plan
of salvation, we may be sure that our own wants and trials do not
escape the omniscient eye of Him who plans all our lives, appointing
the end from the very beginning. St. Peter was hungry, and as food was
preparing he fell into a trance, and then the vision answering in its
form to the hunger which he felt was granted. Vain questions may here
be raised, as we noted before in the case of St. Paul, concerning the
trance of the Apostle and the communications he held with the unseen
world. They are vain questions for us to raise or to attempt to
answer, because they belong to an unexplored land full, as many modern
experiments show, of strange mysterious facts peculiar to it. This
alone we can say, some communication must have been made to St. Peter
which he regarded as a Divine revelation. The conversion and reception
by St. Peter of the Gentile centurion are facts, the prejudices of St.
Peter against such a reception are also undoubted facts. Hitherto he
shared the opinion common to all the Twelve that such a reception was
contrary to the Divine law and purposes. He must have received upon
the housetop some kind of a heavenly communication which he regarded
as equivalent in authority to that ancient rule by which he esteemed
the promises and mercy of God limited to the seed of Abraham. But as
for any endeavour to understand or explain the mode of God's action on
this occasion, it will be just as vain as attempts to pierce the
mysteries of God's action in creation, the incarnation, or, to come
lower still, in the processes by which life has been communicated to
this world and is now sustained and continued thereon. We are in very
deed living and moving amid mysteries, and if we refuse to learn or
meditate till the mysteries we meet with, the very first step we take,
be cleared, we must cease to think and be content to pass life like
the beasts that perish. We know not, indeed, the exact manner in which
God communicated with St. Peter, or for that matter with any one else
to whom He made revelation of His will. We know nothing of the manner
in which He spoke to Moses out of the bush, or to Samuel in the night
season, or to Isaiah in the Temple. As with these His servants of the
Elder Dispensation, so it was with St. Peter on the housetop. We know,
however, how St. Luke received his information as to the nature of the
vision and all the other facts of the case. St. Luke and St. Peter
must have had many an opportunity for conversation in the thrilling,
all-important events amid which he had lived. St. Luke too accompanied
St. Paul on that journey to Jerusalem described in the twenty-first
chapter, and was introduced to the Christian Sanhedrin or Council over
which St. James the Just presided. But even if St. Luke had never seen
St. Peter, he had abundant opportunities of learning all about the
vision. St. Peter proclaimed it to the world from the very time it
happened, and was obliged to proclaim it as his defence against the
party zealous for the law of Moses. St. Peter referred to what God had
just shown him as soon as he came into the centurion's presence. He
described the vision at full length as soon as he came to Jerusalem
and met the assembled Church, where its power and meaning were so
clearly recognised that the mouths of all St. Peter's adversaries were
at once stopped. And again at the Council of Jerusalem held, as
described in the fifteenth chapter, St. Peter refers to the
circumstances of this whole story as well known to the whole Church in
that city. St. Luke then would have no difficulty, writing some twenty
years later, in ascertaining the facts of this story, and naturally
enough, when writing to a Gentile convert and having in mind the needs
and feelings of the Gentiles, he inserted the narrative of the vision
as being the foundation-stone on which the growing and enlarging
edifice of Gentile Christianity had been originally established. The
vision too was admirably suited to serve its purpose. It based itself,
as I have said, on Peter's natural feelings and circumstances, just as
spiritual things ever base themselves upon and respond to the natural
shadows of this lower life, just as the Holy Communion, for instance,
bases itself upon the natural craving for food and drink, but rises
and soars far away above and beyond the material sphere to the true
food of the soul, the Divine banquet wherewith God's secret and loved
ones are eternally fed. Peter was hungry, and a sheet was seen let
down from heaven containing all kinds of animals, clean and unclean,
together with creeping things and fowls of heaven. He was commanded to
rise and slay and appease his hunger. He states the objection, quite
natural in the mouth of a conscientious Jew, that nothing common or
unclean had ever been eaten by him. Then the heavenly voice uttered
words which struck for him the death-knell of the old haughty Jewish
exclusiveness, inaugurating the grand spirit of Christian liberalism
and of human equality--"What God hath cleansed, make thou not common."
The vision was thrice repeated to make the matter sure, and then the
heavens were shut up again, and Peter was left to interpret the Divine
teaching for himself. Peter, in the light of the circumstances which a
few moments later took place, easily read the interpretation of the
vision. The distinction between animals and foods was for the Jew but
an emblem and type, a mere object lesson of the distinction between
the Jews and other nations. The Gentiles ate every kind of animal and
creeping thing; the favourite food of the Roman soldiers with whom the
Palestinian Jews came most in contact being pork. The differences
which the Divine law compelled the Jew to make in the matter of food
were simply the type of the difference and separation which God's love
and grace had made between His covenant people and those outside that
covenant. And just then, to clinch the matter and interpret the vision
by the light of divinely ordered facts, the Spirit announced to the
Apostle, as "he was much perplexed in himself what the vision might
mean," that three men were seeking him, and that he was to go with
them doubting nothing, "for I have sent them."[79] The hour had at
last come for the manifestation of God's everlasting purposes, when
the sacred society should assume its universal privileges and stand
forth resplendent in its true character as God's Holy Catholic
Church,--of which the Temple had been a temporary symbol and
pledge,--a house of prayer for all nations, the joy of the whole
earth, the city of the Great King, until the consummation of all
things.
[79] Calvin, in his commentary on Acts x. 12, has some excellent
remarks on the scope and meaning of this vision. "I think that
hereby is shown to Peter that the distinction which God hitherto
made had now been removed. For as He had made a difference between
animals; so by the choice of one nation for Himself, God showed
that other nations were common and unclean. Now the distinction
between animals being removed, He consequently shows that there is
no longer any difference between men, and that the Jew does not
differ from the Greek. Hence Peter is warned not to shrink from
contact with the Gentiles as if they were unclean. There is no
doubt but that God wished to encourage Peter to come boldly to
Cornelius. Therefore, in order that he might be perfectly
satisfied, God shows him as in a picture that the distinctions
made by the law between clean and unclean had been abolished;
whence he may conclude that the partition which had hitherto
divided Jews from Gentiles was now overthrown. Now Paul teaches
that this mystery had been hid from the ages that the Gentiles
should be partakers with God's people and grafted into one body.
Therefore Peter never would have dared to open the gate of the
Kingdom of Heaven, unless God Himself had shown him that the wall
had been removed and that entrance was free to all." He then goes
on to consider the objection that St. Peter must have known of the
call of the Gentiles from the words of Christ's commission to go
and make disciples of all nations, and therefore this vision was
unnecessary. "I answer that there was so much difficulty in the
novelty of the whole state of affairs that the apostles could not
at once grasp the position. They knew indeed in theory the
prophecies and the precept of Christ about preaching to the
Gentiles, but when they came to practice, struck by the awful
novelty, they hesitated. Wherefore it is not wonderful that the
Lord should confirm St. Peter's mind by a new sign." Calvin
clearly recognised that the inspiration enjoyed by St. Peter did
not remove his natural slowness of perception. The apostles were
like the bulk of ordinary men, very slow to grasp the full meaning
of a novel position or principle.
IV. The sacred historian next presents St. Peter at Cæsarea. The
Apostle rose up obedient to the Divine communication, admitted the men
who sought him, lodged them for the night, departed back the next day
along the same road which they had followed, and arrived at Cæsarea on
the fourth day from the original appearance to Cornelius; so that if
the angel had been seen by the centurion on Saturday or the Sabbath
the vision would have been seen at Joppa on the Lord's Day, and then
on Tuesday St. Peter must have arrived at Cæsarea. St. Peter did not
travel alone. He doubtless communicated the vision he had seen to the
Church at Joppa at the evening hour of devotion, and determined to
associate with himself six prominent members of that body in the
fulfilment of his novel enterprise that they might be witnesses of
God's actions and assistants to himself in the work of baptism and of
teaching. As soon as the missionary party arrived at the house of
Cornelius, they found a large party assembled to meet them, as
Cornelius had called together his kinsmen and acquaintances to hear
the message from heaven. Cornelius received St. Peter with an
expression of such profound reverence, prostrating himself on the
earth, that St. Peter reproved him: "But Peter raised him up, saying,
Stand up: I myself also am a man." Cornelius, with his mind formed in
a pagan mould and permeated with pagan associations and ideas,
regarded Peter as a superhuman being, and worthy therefore of the
reverence usually rendered to the Roman Emperor as the living
embodiment of deity upon earth. He fell down and adored St. Peter,
even as St. John adored the angel who revealed to him the mysteries of
the unseen world (Rev. xxii. 8), till reminded by St. Peter that he
was a mere human being like the centurion himself, full of human
prejudices and narrow ideas which would have prevented him accepting
the invitation of Cornelius if God Himself had not intervened.
Cornelius then describes the circumstances of his vision and the
angelic directions which he had received, ending by requesting St.
Peter to announce the revelation of which he was the guardian. The
Apostle then proceeds to deliver an address, of which we have recorded
a mere synopsis alone; the original address must have been much
longer. St. Peter begins the first sermon delivered to Gentiles by an
assertion of the catholic nature of the Church, a truth which he only
just now learned: "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of
persons: but in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh
righteousness, is acceptable to Him": a passage which has been much
misunderstood. People have thought that St. Peter proclaims by these
words that it was no matter what religion a man professed, provided
only he led a moral life and worked righteousness. His doctrine is of
quite another type. He had already proclaimed to the Jews the
exclusive claims of Christ as the door and gate of eternal life. In
the fourth chapter and twelfth verse he had told the Council at
Jerusalem that "in none other than Jesus Christ of Nazareth is there
salvation: for neither is there any other name under heaven, that is
given among men wherein we must be saved." St. Peter had seen and
heard nothing since which could have changed his views or made him
think conscious faith in Jesus Christ utterly unimportant, as this
method of interpretation, to which I refer, would teach. St. Peter's
meaning is quite clear when we consider the circumstances amid which
he stood. He had hitherto thought that the privilege of accepting the
salvation offered was limited to the Jews. Now he had learned from
Heaven itself that the offer of God's grace and mercy was free to all,
and that wherever man was responding to the dictates of conscience
and yielding assent to the guidance of the inner light with which
every man was blessed, there God's supreme revelation was to be
proclaimed and for them the doors of God's Church were to be opened
wide.
St. Peter then proceeds, in his address, to recapitulate the leading
facts of the gospel story. He begins with John's baptism, glances at
Christ's miracles, His crucifixion, resurrection, and mission of the
apostles, concluding by announcing His future return to be the Judge
of quick and dead. St. Peter must, of course, have entered into
greater details than we possess in our narrative; but it is not always
noticed that he was addressing people not quite ignorant of the story
which he had to tell. St. Peter begins by expressly stating, "The word
which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching good tidings of
peace by Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all)--that saying ye yourselves
know." Cornelius and his friends were devout and eager students of
Jewish religious movements, and they had heard in Cæsarea vague
reports of the words and doings of the great prophet who had caused
such commotion a few years before. But then they were outside the
bounds of Israel, whose religious authorities had rejected this
prophet. The religion of Israel had illuminated their own pagan
darkness, and they therefore looked up to the decision of the high
priests and of the Sanhedrin with profound veneration, and dared not
to challenge it. They had never previously come in personal contact
with any of the new prophet's followers, and if they had, these
followers would not have communicated to them anything of their
message. They simply knew that a wondrous teacher had appeared, but
that his teaching was universally repudiated by the men whose views
they respected, and therefore they remained content with their old
convictions. The information, however, which they had gained formed a
solid foundation, upon which St. Peter proceeded to raise the
superstructure of Christian doctrine, impressing the points which the
Jews denied--the resurrection of Christ and His future return to judge
the world.
In this connexion St. Peter touches upon a point which has often
exercised men's minds. In speaking of the resurrection of Christ he
says, "Him God raised up the third day, and gave Him to be made
manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen
before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with Him after He
rose from the dead." From the time of Celsus, who lived in the second
century, people have asked, Why did not the risen Saviour manifest
Himself to the chief priests and Pharisees? Why did He show Himself
merely to His friends? It is evident that from the very beginning this
point was emphasised by the Christians themselves, as St. Peter
expressly insists upon it on this occasion. Now several answers have
been given to this objection. Bishop Butler in his _Analogy_ deals
with it. He points out that it is only in accordance with the laws of
God's dealings in ordinary life. God never gives overwhelming
evidence. He merely gives sufficient evidence of the truth or wisdom
of any course, and till men improve the evidence which He gives He
withholds further evidence. Christ gave the Jews sufficient evidences
of the truth of His work and mission in the miracles which He wrought
and the gracious words which distilled like Divine dew from His lips.
They refused the evidence which He gave, and it would not have been in
accordance with the principles of Divine action that He should then
give them more convincing evidence. Then, again, the learned Butler
argues that it would have been useless, so far as we are concerned, to
have manifested Christ to the Jewish nation at large, unless He was
also revealed and demonstrated to be the risen Saviour to the Romans,
and not to them merely, but also to each successive generation of men
as they arose. For surely if men can argue that the apostles and the
five hundred brethren who saw Christ were deceived, or were the
subjects of a temporary illusion, it might be as justly argued that
the high priests and the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem were in their turn
deceived or the subjects of a hallucination which their longing desire
for a Messiah had produced. In modern times, again, Dr. Milligan in an
able and acute work on the Resurrection has argued that it was
impossible, from the nature of the resurrection body and the character
of the resurrection state, for Christ to be thus manifested to the
Jewish nation. He belonged to a different plane. He lived now on a
higher level. He could not now be submitted to a coarse contact with
gross carnal men. He was obliged therefore to depend upon the
testimony of His chosen witnesses, fortified and confirmed by the
evidence of miracles, of prophecy, and of the Holy Ghost speaking in
them and working with them. All these arguments are most true and
sound, and yet they fail to come home to many minds. They leave
something to be desired. They fail in showing the wisdom of the actual
course that was adopted. They leave men thinking in their secret
hearts, would it not after all have been the best and most
satisfactory course if the risen Lord had been manifested to all the
people and not merely to witnesses chosen before of God? I think there
is an argument which has not been sufficiently worked out, and which
directly meets and answers this objection. The risen Saviour was not
manifested to all the people because such a course would have wrecked
the great cause which He had at heart, and defeated the great end of
His Incarnation, which was to establish a Church on the earth where
righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Ghost would find place and
abound. Let us take it in this way. Let us inquire what would have
been the immediate consequence had Christ been revealed to all the
people gathered in their millions for the celebration of the Passover.
They would either have rejected Him afresh or they would have accepted
Him. If they rejected Him, they would be only intensifying their
responsibility and their guilt. If they accepted Him as their
long-expected Messiah, then would have come the catastrophe. In their
state of strained expectation and national excitement they would have
swept away every barrier, they would have rushed to arms and burst
into open rebellion against the Romans, initiating a war which would
have only ended with the annihilation of the Jewish race or with the
destruction of the Roman Empire. The immediate result of the
manifestation of the risen Saviour to the chief priests and the people
would have been a destruction of human life of such a widespread and
awful character as the world had never seen. This we know from history
would have been infallibly the case. Again and again during the first
and second centuries the Jews burst forth into similar rebellions,
urged on by some fanatic who pretended to be the long-expected
deliverer, and tens of thousands, aye, even hundreds of thousands of
human lives Jewish and Gentile were repeatedly sacrificed on the altar
of this vain carnal expectation.
We are expressly informed too that our Lord had experience in His own
person of this very danger. St. John tells us that Christ Himself had
on one occasion to escape from the Jews when they were designing to
take Him by force and make Him a King; while again the first chapter
of this Book of Acts and the query which the apostles propounded upon
the very eve of the Ascension show that even they with all the
teaching which they had received from our Lord concerning the purely
spiritual and interior nature of His kingdom still shared in the
national delusions, and were cherishing dreams of a carnal empire and
of human triumphs. We conclude, then, on purely historical grounds,
and judging from the experience of the past, that the course which God
actually adopted was profoundly wise and eminently calculated to avoid
the social dangers which surrounded the path of the Divine
developments. I think that if we strive to realise the results which
would have followed the manifestation of Christ in the manner which
objectors suggest, we shall see that the whole spiritual object, the
great end of Christ's Incarnation, would have been thus defeated. That
great end was to establish a kingdom of righteousness, peace, and
humility; and that was the purpose attained by the mode of action
which was in fact adopted. From the Day of Pentecost onward the Church
grew and flourished, developing and putting in practice, however
imperfectly, the laws of the Sermon on the Mount. But if Christ had
revealed Himself to the unconverted Jews of Jerusalem after the
Resurrection, it would not have had the slightest effect towards
making them Christians after the model which He desired. Nay, rather
such an appearance would merely have intensified their narrow Judaism
and confirmed them in those sectarian prejudices, that rigid
exclusiveness from which Christ had come to deliver His people. The
spiritual effects of such an appearance would have been absolutely
nothing. The temporal effects of it would have been awfully
disastrous, unless indeed God had consented to work the most
prodigious and astounding miracles, such as smiting the Roman armies
with destruction and interfering imperiously with the course of human
society.
Then again it is worthy of notice that such a method of dealing with
the Jews would have been contrary to Christ's methods and laws of
action as displayed during His earthly ministry. He never worked
miracles for the mere purposes of intellectual conviction. When a sign
from heaven was demanded from Him for this very purpose He refused it.
He ever aimed at spiritual conversion. An exhibition of the risen Lord
to the Jewish nation might have been followed by a certain amount of
intellectual conviction as to His Divine authority and mission. But,
apart from the power of the Holy Ghost, which had not been then poured
out, this intellectual conviction would have been turned to disastrous
purposes, as we have now shown, and have proved utterly useless
towards spiritual conversion. The case of the Resurrection is, in
fact, in many respects like the case of the Incarnation. We think in
our human blindness that we would have managed the manifestations and
revelations of God much better, and we secretly find fault with the
Divine methods, because Christ did not come much earlier in the
world's history and thousands of years had to elapse before the Divine
Messenger appeared. But then, Scripture assures us that it was in the
fulness of time Christ came, and a profounder investigation will
satisfy us that history and experience bear out the testimony of
Scripture. In the same way human blindness imagines that it would have
managed the Resurrection far better, and it has a scheme of its own
whereby Christ should have been manifested at once to the Jews, who
would have been at once converted into Christians of the type of the
apostles, and then Christ should have advanced to the city of Rome,
casting down the idols in His triumphant march, and changing the Roman
Empire into the Kingdom of God. This is something like the scheme
which the human mind in secret substitutes for the Divine plan, a
scheme which would have involved the most extravagant interruptions of
the world's business, the most extraordinary interpositions on God's
part with the course of human affairs. For one miracle which the
Divine method has necessitated, the human plan, which lies at the
basis of the objections we are considering, would have necessitated
the working of a thousand miracles and these of a most stupendous
type. These considerations will help to show what bad judges we are of
the Divine methods of action, and will tend towards spiritual and
mental humility by impressing upon us the inextricable confusion into
which we should inevitably land the world's affairs had we but the
management of them for a very few hours. Verily as we contemplate the
Resurrection of Christ and the management of the whole plan of
salvation, we gather glimpses of the supernatural wisdom whereby the
whole was ordered, and learn thus to sing with a deeper meaning the
ancient strain, "Thy way, O God, is in the sea, and Thy paths in the
great waters, and Thy footsteps are not known. Thou leddest thy
people like sheep, by the hand of Moses and Aaron."[80]
[80] The aim of Christianity was to strike at the essential evil
of the human heart. One darling sin of man is ostentation. It was
one special vice of society in the age of the Incarnation, as
students of the history of that period know right well. Now the
real objection to the Divine method of action about Christ's
Resurrection is that it was not ostentatious. If the human scheme
had been adopted, it would simply have encouraged and sanctioned
the ostentation which already dominated the world. But the Divine
rule ever is this, "The kingdom of God cometh not with
observation," and in the very method of its development
Christianity has taught men humility and self-abasement.
The sacred narrative then tells us that "while Peter yet spake these
words, the Holy Ghost fell on all them which heard the word." The
brethren which came from Joppa, strict observers of the law of Moses
as they were, beheld the external proofs of God's presence, and were
amazed, "because that on the Gentiles also was poured out the gift of
the Holy Ghost," which is further explained by the words, "they heard
the Gentiles speaking with tongues and magnifying God." The gift of
the Holy Ghost takes the same and yet a different shape from that in
which it was manifested on the Day of Pentecost. The gifts of tongues
on the Day of Pentecost was manifested in a variety of languages,
because there was a vast variety of tongues and nationalities then
present at Jerusalem. But it would seem as if on this occasion the
Holy Ghost and His gift of speech displayed itself in sacred song and
holy praise: "They heard them speak with tongues and magnify God."
Greek was practically the one tongue of all those who were present.
The new converts had been inhabitants for years of Cæsarea which was
now one of the most thoroughly Greek towns in Palestine, so that the
gift of tongues as displayed on this occasion must have been of
somewhat different character from that exercised on the Day of
Pentecost, when a vast variety of nations heard the company of the
disciples and apostles speaking in their own languages. There is
another difference too between the original outpouring of the Holy
Ghost and this repetition of the gift. The Holy Ghost on the first
occasion was poured out upon the preachers of the word to qualify them
to preach to the people. The Holy Ghost on the second occasion was
poured out upon the persons to whom the word was preached to sanction
and confirm the call of the Gentiles. The gifts of the Holy Spirit are
confined to no rank or order. They are displayed as the common
property of all Christian people, and indicate the freedom and the
plenteousness wherewith God's blessings shall be dispensed under the
new covenant which was taking the place of the old Levitical Law.
And then comes the last touch which the narrative puts to the whole
story: "Then answered Peter, Can any man forbid the water, that these
should not be baptized, which have received the Holy Ghost as well as
we? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ."
What a corrective we here find of those ultra-spiritual views which
make shipwreck of faith! We have known intelligent men speak as if the
apostles laid no stress upon holy baptism, and valued it not one whit
as compared with the interior gift of the Holy Ghost. We have known
intelligent members of the Society of Friends who could not see that
the apostles taught the necessity for what they call water baptism.
For both these classes of objectors these words of St. Peter, this
incident in the story of Cornelius have an important lesson. They
prove the absolute necessity in the apostolic estimation of the rite
of Holy Baptism as perpetually practised in the Church of God. For
surely if ever the washing of water in the name of the Holy Trinity
could have been dispensed with, it was in the case of men upon whom
God had just poured the supernatural gift of the Holy Ghost; and yet
even in their case the divinely appointed sacrament of entrance into
the sacred society could not be dispensed with. They were baptized
with water in the sacred name, and then, cherishing that sweet sense
of duty fulfilled and obedience rendered and spiritual peace and joy
possessed which God bestows upon His elect people, they entered into
that fuller knowledge and richer grace, that feast of spiritual fat
things which St. Peter could impart, as he told them from his own
personal knowledge of the life and teaching of Christ Jesus. It is no
wonder that the history of this critical event should terminate with
these words: "Then prayed they him to tarry certain days,"[81]
expressing their keen desire to drink more deeply of the well of life
thus lately opened to their fainting souls.
[81] Tradition tells very little about Cornelius. There is indeed
a long article devoted to him by the Bollandists, _Acta
Sanctorum_, Feb. t. 1, p. 280, but there is nothing in it. He is
commemorated on Feb. 2nd. The Greeks make him bishop of Scepsis,
the Latins of Cæsarea. St. Jerome says that in his time the house
of Cornelius had been turned into a church. The story of his life
as told in the Martyrologies is evidently a mere mediæval
concoction. At Scepsis the prefect Demetrius brings him into a
temple of Apollo, when at his prayer the idol is smashed to pieces
and the magistrate converted. Such stories are, however, the
stock-in-trade of the legend-mongers of the Middle Ages.