January 10
“A devout man, and one that feared God, with all his house; which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway.” Acts 10:2.
We should beware of general and indiscriminate reflections upon communities and professions. They are injurious; they tend to make and keep the parties what they are generally supposed to be. They are unjust, for there are always exceptions. And they are ungenerous; for the more temptations men have to resist, the more evils they have to subdue, the more difficulties they have to struggle with, the more deserving and commendable is the individual that succeeds; or rather, the more is the grace of God glorified in him. Can there be no excellency connected with arms? In the New Testament we meet with no less than four centurions, and all are spoken of with approbation: the centurion who came to our Lord on the behalf of his servant; the centurion that watched at the cross; the centurion that behaved so courteously to Paul in his voyage; and Cornelius, here spoken of.
He is supposed to have been a proselyte, but he was not. Yet he worshipped God, the knowledge of whom he probably obtained by residing with his men in Judea. He was a” devout man,77 and three fine unions are mentioned in his character and conduct.
A union of personal and relative duty: “He feared God, with all his house.” This was like Joshua, who said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord:” not my house without myself, nor myself without my house; but I, and my house. If we are godly ourselves, we shall surely give evidence of it by instructing and admonishing and impressing those who are placed under our care. And in vain shall we use the means, if we counteract them by our own example. We must do, as well as teach.
A union of piety and morality: he gave alms and prayed. Piety is more than prayer; and morality is more than alms: yet alms and prayer are not only parts, but essential parts of them; and they can never be separated. Some talk of their love to the gospel, and their communion with God, who are hard-hearted and close-handed. “But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?” Others stand fair with their fellow-creatures, and are distinguished by liberality and kindness, yet they have no fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ; they live without God; they indulge their sensual passions, and imagine that charity covers a multitude of sins. “But pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep themselves unspotted from the world.”
A union of the real and eminent in religion: “He gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always.” There cannot be the eminence of grace without the reality; but there may be the reality without the eminence. We should be thankful for a day of small things, but we ought to seek after a day of great ones. We should add to the essentials of religion its excellences too. We should not only have life, but have it more abundantly.
As to our temporal condition, we should be content with such things as we have. But contentment does not become us in divine things. There we should be ambitious. There we should be covetous. We need more, and more is attainable. Let us therefore enlarge our desires and our hopes, and seek to be filled with all the fulness of God.