The New Chapters
God’s coin has the mark of His mint, and bears His image and superscription. When His Son came to earth, though His divinity wore the disguise of our humanity, behind His robe of flesh there flashed upon His breast “the star of empire.” And so, when the word of God came in the dress of human speech, it shone with the glory of God.
The manifold uses of the Holy Scripture grow clearer as we study the inspired book. It is the key that unlocks all perplexities. As Arthur Hallam said, it proves itself God’s book, because it is man’s book, fitting every turn and curve of the human heart. Bengel’s motto was: ‘* Apply thyself wholly to the scriptures, and apply the scriptures wholly to thyself.” The Son of God Himself found in His Father’s word. His sword in temptation. His stay in trial. His guide in teaching; its prophecies were the seals of His messiahship, its precepts the rule of His obedience, its promises the balm for His suffering; through life He had no grander theme, and in death no richer legacy. Modern critics often handle it with irreverent hands, but to Him it was sacred in every part; and Michel Angelo’s romantic devotion to the famous torso of Hercules in the Vatican, seeking to feel through touch the thrill of delight no longer granted through his blind eyes, is but a faint image of the divine and holy rapture with which Jesus studied the inspired Scriptures.
World-wide missions present for solution a most perplexing practical problem. Where shall we come for guidance if not to these oracles of God? Over these “pillars of Hercules” is fore vermore written, ne plus ultra. Beyond this word there is nothing satisfactory, nothing needful. God has magnified His word above all His name, and here are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
This principle we seek now to apply to one book of the New Testament, which will be found to be both a history and a philosophy of missions in one. That book is the Acts of the Apostles. Here, what is found in the gospels in precept, is found in practice; gospel teaching as set forth by the Evangelists, applied actually and historically, by the coming of the Holy Spirit.
Luke, who, in the gospel, tells us what Jesus began,’’ in the Acts tells us what He “continued, both to do and teach,” by the Spirit, through disciples, as to the kingdom of God. Here, as in the very order of the gospels, the door of faith is successively opened to Hebrew, Roman, and Greek believers. Pentecost links Old Testament prophecy with New Testament history. This is the book of witness: both man’s witness to God, and God’s witness to man; the sequel of the gospels, the basis of the epistles; not so much the acts of the apostles, as the acts of the Holy Spirit and of the risen Redeemer in the person of the Paraclete.
Here the Spirit is seen, first applying the truth and the blood to penitent believers, then anointing believers for service, then sending them forth as heralds and witnesses to preach the kingdom, to make disciples, and to organize disciples into churches. What meaning is wrapt up in the fact that the period of time covered by this book is only about thirty-three years — the length of our Lord’s human life, the average of one generation — as though plainly meant to teach us what may be and should be done in every successive generation, until the end of the world-age itself!
The Acts of the Apostles thus forms one great inspired book of missions: God’s own commentary and cyclopedia for all ages, as to every question that touches the world’s evangelization.
The opening verses of each gospel narrative show a fourfold completeness and comprehensiveness; and what Bernard calls ‘’a progress of doctrine:”
MATTHEW:
“The Book of the
Generation of Jesus
Christ, the Son of
David.” etc.
MARK:
“The beginning of
the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of
God,” etc.
LUKE:
.... “A declaration of those things
which are most
surely believed
among us,” etc.
JOHN:
“In the beginning
was the Word, and
the Word was with
God and the Word
was God,” etc.
Thus Matthew links on messianic predictions of the Old Testament to the historic chain of New Testament events, tracing our Lord’s human beginning as born of Mary but begotten of the Holy Spirit. Mark starts with His mature manhood, and shows the Divine messenger delivering his message. Luke sets forth an orderly statement of facts and truths held to be beyond dispute by primitive believers. John goes back beyond them all, to the eternity of the Divine Word.
So do the initial chapters of the Acts bear marks of design as the sequel not of Luke’s former treatise only, but of all the four accounts which this book follows. It braids together into one their four strands of testimony. In the structure of the New Testament this is the entablature resting upon and uniting the four columns which support it and which it surmounts. Hence, to read this book aright, we must perceive its fourfold character or aspect. It is the book of the advent of the Holy Spirit, and of the generation of the Church of Christ, begotten of the Spirit in the womb of our humanity. It is the beginning of the gospel of the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Godhead. It is the orderly setting forth of the great fact and truth of the Spirit’s outpouring, as most surely believed among those who were eye-witnesses of His majestic advent. And it is the first clear revelation of the person of Him who as the Spirit of God was in the beginning with God and was God.
In a word, just what the fourfold gospel is to Christ, the Acts of the Apostles is to the Spirit — the inspired account of His advent, and of the birth of the Bride of Christ; the beginning of the gospel of the Spirit’s presence and power; the declaration in order of that supreme secret of all holy living and faithful service, His inward working; and finally, the unveiling of His eternal identity with, and procession from, the Godhead. Truly this book is the Acts of the Holy Spirit.
Thus the advent of the Spirit, and His activity in and through the Church, are the keys which open the doors to all the chambers in this House of the Interpreter. From the first chapter to the last, the theme is the same: the coming of the Spirit, to apply the truth, arouse the conscience, soften the heart, subdue the will, anoint the tongue, and hallow the lip — to take the place of the absent Lord — nay, to make real to believers the promise of His perpetual presence, by becoming to every renewed soul all that Christ would have been had He remained on earth.
Upon one grand fact we lay great stress, and shall recur to it from time to time, that by blow upon blow repetition may deepen impression. This book of the Acts, which is to the Church the Principia embodying the great laws and principles for our guidance in the work of missions; this book, which is the history of primitive missions, and like all history is “philosophy teaching by examples,” illustrating the practical operation of these laws and principles during one whole generation — this book is manifestly and designedly incomplete, unfinished.
This unfinished character is shown both by its beginning and its close. That ‘’ former treatise of all that Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up,” implies this latter treatise of all that He continued ^toh to do and teach after that He was taken up. This introduction stamps this book as a continuance and sequel to a previous narrative, which is necessary to its full interpretation. Accordingly, we are prepared to see Christ in the Acts continuing His words and works through the Spirit. He who for forty days after His resurrection gave in His personal presence many infallible proofs of the reality of that resurrection, here gives equally infallible proofs of His perpetual presence in the work of the Holy Spirit.
How long will He continue thus to do and teach? So long as He has a believing body of disciples who still go forth into all the world as witnesses bearing His message. The wondrous story opens with the enduement of power, and throughout exhibits its effect in qualifying witnesses for their work: nor is there any hint that this Power ever was, or will be, withdrawn. The narrative stops, but the history goes on. Wherever devout disciples claim in prayer and by faith their full share in that Pentecostal fulness, they may go forth endued with power from on High. Wherever, from that day to this, Christ’s witnesses have gone forth in obedience to His word, the same essential marks as in the Apostolic age have attended their service and explained their success.
If now we turn to the conclusion of the Acts, we find a close so abrupt that it suggests yet again a continuance and sequel. The curtain of silence suddenly falls upon a scene of continued action. Paul, dwelling in his own hired house, is still seen receiving all who come unto him, preaching the Kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only the act, but even the scene, is incomplete. Paul’s life is not brought to a close, and his work at Rome is yet going on. Surely this is an unfinished picture; the canvas awaits other touches and tints from the Divine Artist; new scenes in missionary history are to supply new material for sug-
gestion. These last two verses furnish a formula for record for all true witnesses through all aftertime. Change but the name, and the number of the years, and each successive disciple may here find a brief epitome of his life and labour; for whoever, by fulfilling his mission, adds one more unpretending entry to this Apostolic record, belongs to the Apostolic succession. You may think of yourself as less than the least of all saints, yet if, in obedience to your Lord and dependence on His Spirit, you spread the good tidings, to you is this grace given to add and form one more link in that golden chain that reaches from the upper chamber of the Jewish capital to the bridal chamber of the New Jerusalem, and which unites in one glorious succession all in whom Jesus thus continues by the Spirit to speak and work.
We have therefore written intelligently and discriminatingly, in referring to the Acts of the Apostles, as closing rather than ending, for the story comes to no proper conclusion, and is designedly left incomplete. Here is the story of a generation; and no generation ever reaches completeness, but is linked and woven into the next, and its history merges into that of its successor as to-day melts into to-morrow. So, most of all is it in the work of missions. It is so far one work that no eye can trace the point where the mission of one of God’s witnesses ends and that of another begins. Paul’s preaching and teaching still form threads in the fabric of missionary history, and will unto the end.
But in a grander sense the Acts of the Apostles reaches no conclusion. When the late Bishop of Ripon characterized the thrilling story of the Apostle of the South Seas as the “Twenty-ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles,” he was but partly right. To that striking remark history adds one criticism and correction: that was a new chapter, but not the first new chapter added since Apostolic days. Long before John Williams sailed upon his holy mission.
many additions had been made to that unfinished book. Of some of these chapters we have no human memorial: they are written only by the Recording Angel in God’s Book of Remembrance, to be unsealed when those other books are opened and read amid the flaming splendours of the Great White Throne. But it is sublimely true that the triumphant advance of that Tottenham lad who became the great witness for the gospel in the Pacific Polynesia, added a new and glorious chapter to the annals of Apostolic Missions. And so far and so fast as Apostolic working and witnessing have survived and revived, so far and so fast have new chapters in the Acts been enacted, if not written. Nor will the age of missions ever end, until this Divine Mission of witness to men is accomplished. And therefore is this book left incomplete, as it always will be while one believer is left to teach and preach those things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ and to fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his own flesh for His body’s sake, — which is the Church.
Our present purpose, then, is declared in advance. We shall treat the age of Modern Missions, and especially the century of organized missionary activity since Carey led the way, as an illustration of this continuation of the Acts of the Apostles. We shall note some points of comparison and of contrast between the Apostolic age and our own. We shall look in this book for the clue to some of the intricate, complicate problems of missions, and carefully and prayerfully search to find the secrets of success in world-wide witness.
As both brevity and unity of treatment will be conserved by setting proper limits to this discussion, we shall consider, first, the new Pentecosts and the new openings of doors; then the calling and sending forth of the new apostles; then the new voices and visions; then the new converts and martyrs; then the new signs and wonders; and finally, the new hopes and incentives.
For such a study both the writer and reader may well invoke higher help. There is something unusually solemn in treating such a theme. We are to occupy our minds with the New Chapters in the Acts of the Apostles. Only a spiritual eye can read them: only a spiritual mind interpret them. With no careless hand would we venture to fill out the sacred outlines of missionary biography and history, and, peradventure, add another touch to God’s unfinished book. But if that same Spirit who guided the pen of the Evangelist as he wrote this latter treatise, shall deign to open our eyes and direct our gaze, we shall be able to read the records which history has imperfectly written, and gather inspiration for such holy living and heroic serving as shall add yet other chapters in the days to come!