prophecy, and connected it with the promise and mediation of his Master; but being able to do this, he showed by his own sobriety and complete self-control that the spirit of order was supreme. Had Peter been unequal to the exigency, an acute and determined enemy of the Christian cause might have said,-See the confusion to which these unsuspecting dupes have been reduced. The very winds fight against them, and the stars in their courses mock their imbecility; time has answered them, and events have confounded their hopes! But the enemy was anticipated. Instantly the man whom they all knew to have denied his Lord stood forth and claimed the event as a proof of His divine truthfulness and sufficiency. And he did more than this: he showed

3. That the gift which had been shed upon the apostles was offered to all men, upon conditions easy of comprehension: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost; for the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." How different would have been the case had Peter said -We alone are involved in this matter; it is not for you, a special class has thus been created, and endowed with privileges which can neither be explained nor communicated; henceforward we stand apart in a citizenship which no other men can attain.

Instead of a speech so self-congratulatory and monastic, he said—“Men and brethren, this great gift is ready to come upon you also; there is nothing arbitrary in its distribution; it follows conditions which you can all observe; save yourselves from this untoward generation." The universality of the Christian appeal will always be, as it has ever been, an argument impossible to refute. A religion without money stipulations, without invidious social distinctions, speaking to the sinful, the weary, and the despairing, words of infinite hope and pathos, is presumably such a religion as would be propounded by a God of righteousness and mercy. Peter's exposition was not, as to the effects of his doctrine, limited in time. It holds good to-day. Men may test it for themselves, seeing that the residue of the Spirit is with God, and that the Father will give it "unto them that ask Him.”

In making these three points clear, Peter set himself in a new and impressive light. The speech actually glorified the speaker. As an exposition it is remarkable as well for intellectual grasp as for spiritual unction. As it proceeded it was felt that the taunt, "these men are full of new wine," was a poor sneer. The exposition goes back to the solemn days of ancient prophecy, it gathers the events of current activity and thought around the Cross, and it penetrates into scenes afar off and ages yet to come. It was a speech in every respect equal to the occasion, and in no particular more

so than in the intensity of its ardour. Every word of it might have been uttered with a tongue of fire. We shall know now the standard by which apostles and apostolic doctrine are to be measured: there must be no falling below this original type; no man must be less ardent, less liberal, less hopeful; every man must of course retain his own stature and his own accent, but if he abate aught of enthusiasm and nobleness the validity of his spiritual baptism may be denied. Strange, yet beautiful, is the

arrangement by which Peter thus becomes the typical man of the apostolate. Contrast this speech with the statement made by this same Peter before the fire fell upon him. At an early meeting of the church it was proposed to fill up a vacancy in the office from which Judas by transgression fell. Peter laid before the "men and brethren" an explanation of the case, and the election was determined by the giving forth of lots. Lame and impotent conclusion! Had Peter waited a little longer he would have looked with contempt and shame upon this miserable shift. Matthias was elected to the apostleship, and to obscurity: he was never heard of more; a rebuke which properly finished an old and poor way of doing things, without utterly disregarding the prayerfulness and religious impatience of honest men who were anxious to keep forms and numbers in perfect order. After the descent of the Holy Ghost, no lot-drawing was needed to enable this same Peter to see in Cornelius the Gentile an elect saint, and to detect in Simon

the sorcerer a child of the devil. So much for a true spiritual instinct. We hear no more of lotcasting, or of the formal tests which many Old Testament men delighted to set up in times of perplexity. A new and higher order has been established; they who live in the Spirit know what is right by a sympathy sensitive and unerring, and when they come into practical difficulties, instead of resorting to signs and tokens which are not far removed from jugglery, they quietly wait for the salvation of God.

XI.

THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT.

In a

JESUS Christ taught the doctrine of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and St. Paul, "an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God," taught the complemental doctrine of a direct personal witness of the same Spirit to the soul that had become renewed," the Spirit itself beareth witness with our Spirit, that we are the children of God." sense, then, which is evidently as probable as it is consolatory, the act of regeneration is succeeded by the act of confirmation; which, indeed, would seem to be the divine method even in nature itself, seeing that not only did God create the heavens and the earth, but He followed each act of creation with the assurance that it was "very good;" thus, as creation was followed by approval, so the higher act of regeneration is attested by a special witness and seal. It is quite true that the works of nature. are continually vindicating their own goodness, and it is not less true that spiritual sonship is its own witness in the presence of all men; yet the soul which has passed through the agonies of penitence and reconstruction-having known all the sinfulness of sin, and felt that self-redemption is as impossible as it is blasphemous-needs just that word of tender assurance and comfort which is expressed in the doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit. It is not