Every Creature After Its Kind
“And being let go, they went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them.” — Acts iv. 23.
A SECRET, mysterious, reciprocal attraction drew Peter and John together, although the two men were by no means similar in character. They were companions in their visit to the empty sepulchre, and companions in the dangerous duty of preaching Christ in J erusalem immediately after the Pentecost. Perhaps the difference, or even the contrast between them in natural disposition, rendered them more suitable to each other for mutual help. As a man’s strength and a woman’s gentleness bind two into one in married life, the robust, impetuous Peter clung to the calm, self-possessed tenderness of J ohn; and John, in his weakness, was fain to lean on Peter’s strength.
This noble pair of brothers, when their own love was warm, and the hatred of their enemies sharp, stood side by side in the courts of the temple and in the streets of the city, charging home upon the Jewish rulers and people with the terrible indictment,” Ye have crucified the Lord ready, whenever the sword of the Spirit should pierce the conscience of the hearers, to run in and apply for healing the blood of atonement.
Grieved that these two witnesses should teach the people, through the risen Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, the Sanhedrim had arrested Peter and John at the close of their day’s labour, and shut them in prison for the night.
How the two prisoners spent the night we are not informed. Perhaps they sang praises, like Paul and Silas at a later date; or perhaps they were not yet so far advanced. It may be that they could not do more than secretly cast their burden on the Lord, without being able as yet to glory in tribulation.
Next day the Council called the prisoners and examined them. Having heard from Peter more of plain truth than was pleasant to their taste, they ordered the panels to be removed from the bar, and consulted privately regarding the case.
The aim of the judges was not to arrive at the truth, but to crush the witnesses. There was not much debate, and their resolution was quickly taken. They recalled the prisoners, and straitly threatened them that they should speak thenceforth to no man in the name of Jesus. Lame and impotent conclusion! They omitted the main element from their calculation. They knew not the fire that the love of Christ had kindled in the hearts of those two men.
Suppose that some savages have seen a cannon charged and discharged. Suppose that when they saw it charged a second time, dreading the consequences, they should gather stones and clay, and therewith ram the cannon full to the muzzle, by way of shutting in the shot, and securing the safety of the neighbourhood. They know not the power of gunpowder when it is touched by a spark. This is the sort of blunder into which the Sanhedrim fell. They thought they could stifle the testimony of the apostles by ramming a threat of punishment down their throats. They knew not the power of faith in Christ, when it is kindled by a spark from heaven.
Peter and John did not deceive their judges. With beautiful simplicity and sublime courage they answered, “Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye.” These Jewish rulers have committed a blunder. They have summoned the sea into their presence, and proclaimed to it, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further!
“We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” It is by no means a universal rule that every man is bound to proclaim all that he has seen and heard. Many things that we see and hear it is both our inclination and our duty to conceal. It is the peculiar nature of the message which these men have received that lays an obligation on them to make it known. The condition on which any one receives mercy in the covenant is that he should hasten to publish the glad tidings abroad. When a polished gem receives a sunbeam on its surface, it is under a natural necessity of spreading out the light in all directions; and so a human soul that receives the light of life from the face of Jesus is under law to let that light shine before men: “Freely ye have received, freely give.”
After another interdict against preaching Christ, the prisoners were dismissed from the bar. It is intimated that the Court would willingly have adopted a severer measure, but were restrained by a fear of the people. This is an illustrious specimen of special providence. When God has given out his decree, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm,” he has suitable instruments always at hand to execute his will. The people, as such, would be a broken reed for any persecuted witness to lean upon. At the next turn of the tide it might become necessary that a military chief should rescue an apostle from a mob that were ready to tear him limb from limb. This is the doing of the Lord. The shields of the earth are his: now with one and now with another he covers his servants’ heads in the day of battle-Accordingly, the two apostles were dismissed; “and being let go, they went to their own company.” Behold a particular fact occurring under the operation of a general law. Like draws to like. When an evil deed was about to be done, the persecutors assembled and laid their heads together: when the Christian mission was about to issue from Jerusalem upon the world, the disciples of Christ congregated in an upper room for prayer. Birds of a feather flock together; and if one bird has been for a time imprisoned — separated from its companions — it is beautiful to see, when the cage is at length opened, how straight and quick is its course through the air to the place where it left its mates and expects to find them again. On this principle proceeds the pigeon- telegraph, which has been long known in the world, but never attained the magnitude of a great national institute till the necessities of the siege forced it to the front in Paris.
The instincts of animals are like the laws of inanimate matter — perfect in their kind. When one lamb is caught and kept for a time separate from the fold, it submits only bo superior force. As soon as it regains liberty, it bounds icross the plain, and never halts till, with beating heart and oanting breath, it has pressed into the midst of the flock igain.
With equal exactness in an opposite direction, the sow hat was washed returns to wallow with her fellows in the lire. Thus suddenly and surely did a worldling, who had for a time been arrested by the discourses of Jesus, leap back into his element of filthy lucre. As soon as a pause in the sermon let him go, he went to his own. When the Lord had finished one of his lessons in the midst of a promiscuous audience, one of the company cried out, “Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me.” The word of Him who spake as never man spake had fascinated even this man, and for a moment separated him from his chosen company and conversation. But the word that arrests attention does not always renew the heart. As soon as the voice of the preacher relaxed, and let go the momentarily entranced listener, he bounded back into his element. He rushed after his covetousness, as water flows down when some interrupting barrier has been removed.
An example of the opposite tendency in a renewed heart is exhibited in the experience of the possessed man whom the Lord delivered at Gadara. Satan had bound him soul anc body, and separated him from all good; but when the chain was broken by the Redeemer’s word, the liberated man ran to his deliverer, and sat at his feet, clothed and in his right mind. Being let go, he too went to his own — to his own Saviour and his own fellow- disciples. It is good when the spring in the heart is sound, and a Christian, by a strong instinct of the new nature, as soon as he is freed from alier entanglements, bounds back into congenial company anc congenial employment.
It is sometimes remarked, that when persons who at home maintained a Christian profession, have gone abroad — gon to a distant colony where ordinances were wanting, or to i Papal country where ordinances were superstitious, — the C have left their religion behind them, and abandoned them selves to godless pleasures or godless gains. In these cases as the result proves, the religion was an external thing from the first. It was of the nature of a bondage. At home the cords of the general Christian profession of the country were sufficiently strong to keep the man away from the employments and company that he secretly loved; but when these cords were broken by the simple fact of his removal from home, he was a free man, and like other creatures, animate and inanimate, when he was let go he went unto his own. Thus worthless, in he last resource, is the Christianity which acts as a restraint to prevent a man from following his own inclinations: beyond expression precious is the faith in Jesus which takes the inclinations and changes them so that they instinctively seek the pure. This false religion of bonds is the direct contrary of the true. Christ’s work is a redemption; Christ is a Redeemer. He sets the captive free. “If the Son make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” This glorious grace turns upside down the world which blindly counts religion so much restraint, to which some men prudently submit, with a view to a larger
I return in a future life. The man who only submits to the restraints of religion, runs wild in all evil when these restraints are removed. “Create in me a clean heart, 0 God.”” Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy
power.”” I will run in the way of thy commandments,
II r when thou hast enlarged my heart.”
W A young man has been accustomed from childhood to the order and sobriety of a Christian household. As the lines of restraint were laid on him while he was an infant, and! iave never been removed throughout his youth, he is not levy vividly conscious that they are only external bands -hat confine him within the course of a well-favoured a norality. The time arrives at last when he must leave his ather’s roof and be lost to view in a great metropolis, like a drop of rain when it falls into the lake. Now is the moment of danger to that youth; now, if ever, for him is the hour and the power of darkness. He feels himself alone as if he were in the heart of an American forest. If his religion has been only a cord round his neck, like the bit and bridle with which a horse is held, he is now free from his religion. If his religion is a thing that can let him go, he will depart to his own: he will seek the company and occupation of the careless, it may be of the profane.
Cords of this sort were fastened on Judas, and as long as they remained they confined his evil practices within very narrow limits; but when at last he was let go, what a fearfully sudden leap he made to his own — his own course, his own company, and his own place.
Demas was brought and kept for a time under the mighty influence of Paul. But the hold which even such a natural leader took, could not always be maintained. It gave way one day, and to the present world, his own chosen portion, gravitated Demas, as a stone sinks to the earth when you let it go in the air. The love of Paul could not hold him — Paul was not crucified for him. The love of God shown to men in the gift of his Son, a bond soft and silent, but omnipotent, like that which keeps the planets in their places, G when once it is folded round you, cannot be wrenched i< away.
But we may find many bright examples of the same! principle on the opposite side. The new creature acts after its kind, as well the old; when the chains of bondage are!ip broken, the captive returns to his Father’s house.
A youth who has already gotten a new heart and enjoys a blessed hope, has been sent as an apprentice into a great ll engineering establishment, where several hundred men are ) employed. His lot is cast in a corner of the huge workshop occupied by a group that have grown old and bold in profanity and licentiousness. In the first hour they discover that a saint is among them, and with a malignity altogether devilish, they gloat in anticipation over their prey. The ribaldry and blasphemy are increased: they do everything that ingenuity can suggest to rub off the youth’s religion, and make him such as one of themselves. If his religion had been a conventional gilding on the surface, it would have been rubbed off in the first week; but as it was all steel, the more roughly it was rubbed the brighter it grew.
The first day wore on towards evening: at six o’clock the bell, in a small tower over the gateway, was rung, and every man threw aside his tools, and hastened away. The apprentice engineer, articled by an eternal covenant to Christ his Saviour, and thereafter indentured to a master engine-maker, was at length let go. Let go, he went to his own: — to the fields, the flowers, the birds, with which he had been wont to keep company at home; then to his food, which he enjoyed with the fresh relish of a labourer, and the fresher 0 relish of a child of God constantly getting daily bread from a Father’s hand; then to the Bible, his own book, the gift of God to him; then to his own Saviour, in faith’s confiding prayer. A whole legion of devils, or wicked men, will not Dvercome this youth. The anchor of his soul is sure and e steadfast within the veil. God will shield him at first, so ;hat the fiery darts shall not hurt him, and after a little put i sword in his hand — the Sword of the Spirit, which is the SVord of God; and this weapon he will wield aggressively, o as to subdue some of these enemies, and lead them captive into Christ.
Yet another lesson. The grave has a greedy appetite, and a firm grasp. It takes many, and keeps what it gets. Deep in the earth, and deeper in the sea, lie the bodies of those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. A strange place for Christ’s members to be in! But there they shall not always be. They must one day be let go; and when let go, they will return to their own — their own Redeemer, and their own rest.
An atom of atmospheric air may have been imprisoned in i some strong vessel at the bottom of the sea for ages. After thousands of years that vessel at last gives way and breaks up. The atom of air, although it has been long an exile, has not forgotten its home, and will not miss its way. Whenever it is released, it rises in a sheer straight line through the thick heavy waters — rises a little air-bell, nor halts in its j course, until, emerging from the sea with a gentle, joyful, bursting sound, it reaches its own, — the heaven, the home which it left many ages before.
Be of good cheer, disciples of the Lord Jesus. Ye are of: more value than many atoms of air. Doth God in nature I care for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field, and the elements of matter; and how much more shall he clothe and house you, 0 ye of little faith! The grave must relax its J grasp. Its stubborn nature has been already tamed into; obedience. The Lord has risen, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. The way by which he went stands open, i and through it all his members will return to him. Earth and sea must give up their dead, and the released prisoners will unerringly find their way home. According to the’ power and the constancy of Nature, which is the power andj constancy of God, like will draw to like at last, — the living m to the living, the living saved to the Living Saviour.