Boldness

“When they beheld the boldness of Peter and John... they marvelled.” — Acts iv. 13.

We have accomplished something when we make the world wonder! To break up its frigid indifference, to shake it out of its customary drowsiness, to startle it into an open-eyed surprise is to commence a ministry which may issue in fruitful worship. Wonder may occasion curiosity, curiosity is frequently the mother of reverence, reverence is the secret of devotion. When we have elicited men’s wonder, we have taken the first step to making them pray. What was it which excited the world’s wonder? “When they beheld the boldness of Peter and John.” That is a very wealthy word, a word not suggestive of any one particular element, but of a whole treasury of spiritual content. It means presence of mind. It means freedom of speech. It means outspokenness almost to the point of bluntness. The men whom the world was contemplating had nothing about them of the panic-stricken. Their words were not stammered in fearful uncertainty. They did not indulge in weak and mincing ambiguities. They did not hide the strength of their testimony in the courtier’s finesse. The outlines of their character and confession were not dim and broken like the lineaments of some hazy moor; they stood out, clear and decisive, like the carved sky-line of a mountain range, or like the rocky headlands of a bold and well-defined coast. “When they beheld the boldness... they marvelled.”

And who were the men upon whom this masculine grace was found? “When they beheld the boldness of Peter,” That is an astonishing conjunction! It is one of the phrases which describe the wonderful ministry of grace. It records a gospel miracle. I know that our hardest rocks, the igneous rocks, are just transformed mud, mud that has passed through the ministry of terrific fire. And here is Simon Peter, once as yielding as mud, not bearing a feather’s weight, but now having passed through the discipline of fiame, the fire of an intense affection, he is firm and irresistible as rock. ‘’ Thou also wast one of His disciples! ‘’... I know not the man! “That is the yielding mud! And it is this man, transformed in the very fibres of his being, who now arrests the thoughtless indifference of the world, and by the spectacle of a magnificent boldness startles it into a great surprise. “When they beheld the boldness of Peter they marvelled.”

“‘And of John!’’ I cannot say that the artist’s John very frequently conveys to me a sufficient conception of the bosom-friend of Christ. The artist usually figures him as of mild and gentle countenance, with far-away dreamy eyes, and of most effeminate mien. Well, I think that any true portraiture of John must include some of these things: there must be a suggestion of mysticism, and in the face there must be a large and winsome gentleness to which we feel we could expose our wounds and our broken hearts; but the gentleness must not be effeminate it must be strong and masculine, and in the face must be charactered elements with which the flippant could no more trifle than he could play with fire. If John is light he is also lightning! And he surnamed them Boanerges, the sons of thunder! ‘^ Perhaps the character of the apostle John might find its appropriate symbol in a lovely dale in Derbyshire through which I have often strolled. There are the soft, sweet, grassy slopes, a welcome delicacy for tired feet; but, rising sheer out of the luscious green there tower the bare, stern, rocky crags, revealing to us the character of the hidden foundations in which even the quiet springy turf finds its bed and rest. John leaned on the Master’s breast; he went to Patmos for his faith! “When they beheld the boldness of Peter and John... they marvelled.”

This boldness was a phenomenon. They could not fit it into any of the current explanations. It was clear that it was not the product of the schools. It was not the fruit of culture. They ‘’ “perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men.” ‘’ Unlearned! ‘’ Yes, that was most evident! Even their dress gave evidence of their illiteracy. They lacked the academic gown. They did not wear the imposing robe of the scribe. Why, even in their very attire, the contrast between them and the rabbi was something like the contrast between a Cromer fisherman and an Oxford don! “Unlearned! ‘^ Certainly; their accent betrayed them! The roughness of the provincial dialect still clung to their untutored tongues. They lacked the gloss and finish of the schools. ‘’ Unlearned! “Certainly, the very subjects and emphases of rabbinical learning found no place in their speech. But more than ‘’ unlearned,” they were ignorant ‘’ men! The original word which lies behind this term “ignorant” is our English word ‘’ idiots.” I do not say that it has the intensity of meaning which attaches to the word to-day, but even in that earlier day it had acquired the trend which has landed it in its present application. “Ignorant,’^ as here employed, means a silly person, a mere layman as opposed to a ranked official, a quack as compared with a skilled physician. They could not fit these men anywhere into the hierarchy of official teachers, and so they relegated them to the ranks of the unrecognised, the mere quacks, and labelled them “unlearned and ignorant men.” And yet here the men stood, with fine spiritual serenity, with an unshaken strength of assurance, with a firm definiteness of thought, with an unwonted precision of speech, and a magnificent irresistibleness of life! Schooled or unschooled this had to be accounted for! Fisherman or rabbi this character demanded explanation! Here was the simple meadow, but here too was the grand, out- jutting height of splendid crag! How explain it? ‘’ When they beheld the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled.” What was the explanation of this character which so perplexed the world? You must turn back to the eighth verse, and you will find the secret. “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost!” That is the explanation of the boldness. It is Peter plus the Infinite! A man who is filled with God can be none other than bold. It is as natural for him to be bold as it is for others to be craven, as natural to be decisive as for others to be limp. But pause by the word “filled.” The entire emphasis gathers there. It is a picturesque word. It was the word that was used when the net was crammed with fishes. It was the word that was used when all the holes were levelled up, and the way was made even and plain. It was the word that was used when a substance had been steeped and soaked in the dye, and every strand and thread in the fabric had received the requisite hue. And this word, with these large inclusive relationships, is the word used to describe the infilling of these men with the Spirit of God. They were filled with the Spirit like a crammed net. Every gap and lack in their being was levelled up by the Spirit, and the whole life was even and symmetrical. And every tissue and fibre in mind and heart and soul was steeped in the Spirit, and dyed into one all-pervasive and heavenly hue. ‘’ Then Peter, filled with the Holy Ghost! ‘^ Do you wonder that he was bold, and startled the onlooker? Why are we not bold? Because the filling is only partial. We touch God on one side and not on another. While these words were being written I passed from my study for a moment to another room in the house, passed from sunshine into comparative twilight, and

from warmth into comparative cold. The transition is symbolic of the change one frequently experiences in passing from one side of a man’s life to another. You touch him here, and he is sunny with God’s presence; you touch him there, and you are struck with the chills of a cold night-wind. If we were filled with the Spirit, if every room in the great temple of the life was pervaded with heavenly light and heat, it would be possible to move from one room to another without any perceptible ,change of temperature. Life has many faculties, and our trouble often is that some are filled, and some are unfilled with the Spirit of God. Sometimes the conscience is God-filled, but not the affections. Sometimes the faculty of benevolence has the heavenly light, but not the imagination. Sometimes the emotions are consecrated, but not the reason and judgment. Life has many relationships, relationships in worship, in work, in recreation, relationships in the family, in society, in the State, and if we were “filled with the Holy Ghost” we could pass from one relationship to another, find God’s light in all, and there would be nothing ‘^ hid from the heat thereof.’’ It is the partial filling which is the peril of the Christian life. It is the unfilled faculty which makes the indecisive life. It is the unhallowed relationship which makes the entire being limp and faint. When we open to God only a little we give immense advantages to the devil. It is the partial opening that makes the perilous draught; there are no draughts in the open air, where God’s sweet air enwraps us about on every side. We must become enswathed, enveloped in the Holy Spirit, and allow every faculty and every relationship to be bathed in His gracious flood. Open yourself out to the Infinite, and you will put on strength and majesty like a robe! Become ‘^ filled “and you cannot help being bold! “And while they were yet praying the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together; and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spake the word of God with boldness.”

There is great and peculiar need of this apostolic “boldness” to-day. The times imperatively demand the military attitude in the soul. The Christian character must be conspicuous for strength, intelligence, decisiveness, attack. Whatever may be allowed to lie in obscurity, or hidden away in secret and mystical depths, the masculinity of Christian discipleship must stand out in bold and flaming relief. I do not fear the serried hosts and hordes of organised devilry if only the temper of the Church is steeled for the fray. There is nothing in the might and majesty of the foe to make us dismayed, but we do need to fear a soft and limp and flaccid Christianity. How do we stand in the matter? Can we say that the great characteristic of our modern discipleship is its boldness, and that by the very vim and pulse of our living we arrest the world in wonder? I must express my fear that we are creating vast numbers of pulpy Christians who are destitute of strong backbone. I regard with grave foreboding the encroachment of an effeminate streak in Christian character which is imperilling its robustness. Christian men and women of to-day do not sit down to the good, square, solid Biblical meals in which our fathers revelled in the generations past. We have fallen upon the days of scraps, and snaps, and chips: everything has to be reduced to the tit-bit, and we ignore the firm and solid loaf. How can we expect robustness from such diet? If the Christian Endeavour movement has a peril — and I speak not as one who looks in at its window, but as one who sits down at its table — its peril consists in the infrequency of the solid meal. When I look at the table I sometimes fear for the muscle. I confess that I would sometimes like to see larger joints upon the table, and larger supplies of wholemeal bread, with a fine hard crust to ensure mastication. Depend upon it, our diet has much to do with our persistence, the furnishing of our table determines the temper of the battlefield. One of the great cities of our island was recently concerned with the softness of the children’s limbs. Their limbs were threaded with bending gristle rather than with firm and well-knit bone. And what is the explanation? That the water they drink is too soft, destitute of the harder elements, lacking the lime which goes to the making of bone. And in the Christian life, when the bones are too soft and gristly, or when the backbone is altogether wanting, the cause may frequently be found in too soft a water-supply, in the ignoring of the harder and severer elements of Christian truth. The water of Calvinism was hard, hard enough, but it made bone, fine bone, bone that never would bend, bone that could only be broken! We must see to it that our water is not too soft, that our diet be not too snippety, that we acquire enough iron and lime to give strength and consistency to our character, and to display naturally the unflinching boldness which makes the world wonder.

‘’ When they beheld the boldness! ‘’ That is the character with which we must confront the world. We need to display boldness of assurance. Mark the bold and magnificent moral sense of these inspired apostles: —” And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right! ‘’ Their conscience pealed out bold as thunder in the midnight! That is the peal which staggers the world. We must not muffle our consciences. We must not give them opiates, and sink them into a perilous sleep. Surely that is not an irrelevant word in these days of multiplied pledges! Every pledge I take may put iron into my conscience or it may narcotise it into deeper sleep. I pledge myself that I will pray every day, that I will read the Bible every day, or I pledge myself that I will plead for missionaries every day; or I pledge myself that I will speak to some one about the Master every day; and so on, and so on! The sphere is great, the ministry is splendid, but the peril is immediate. Every unworthy excuse for the non-fulfilment of the pledge is the application of an opiate to the conscience; it directly tends to silence the warder on the hill, and the bold, clear bugle-peal dies away from the heights. But let this, too, be said as the expression of the same invincible law: every time a worthy pledge is worthily kept, the warder on the hill becomes more vigilant, his clarion becomes more clear, and it will ring out before the world as once, in my native town, in a night of general festivity, when the bells were clanging from every steeple, I heard the firebell ring out above all other sounds, announcing that a destructive fire was burning even in the season of prevailing feast. Keep your conscience bold! Look after the bell-chamber! Let it be filled with the Holy Ghost! ^’When they beheld the boldness... they marvelled.’’

And we need to display boldness of will. Look again at these Spirit-filled men. “Let us straitly threaten them that they speak henceforth to no man in this name.”... “” We cannot hut speak,” How magnificent the response! They felt their wills to be caught in the sweeping current of the Infinite! They were impelled by a mighty imperative, constrained by an all-encompassing and irresistible necessity. “We cannot but speak! “Martin Luther was not far away from apostolic ways when he, too, made similar response to similar threatenings.” I can do no other, God help me! “That is the boldness we need in the warehouse, the shop, the office, the street, and the field. ‘’ I can do no other, God help me!” A temper like that, quiet, firm, bold, irresistible, would bewilder your antagonist and make him limp as water.

‘^ My lads,” said ISTapoleon to a regiment of horse, ‘^ you must not fear death: when soldiers brave death they drive him into the enemy’s ranks.” And we, too, when we are bold and unflinching, send panic and confusion into the lines of the enemy. “Be ye steadfast, unmovable.” ‘’ He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.” ‘’ The righteous are bold as a lion.”

And so I call all, men and boys, the matron and the maid, to this temper of holy boldness. Yes, the matron and the maid! I recall the sacred name of Anne Askew, who was cruelly racked in order to extort from her a base confession. She refused to yield, although her limbs were so dislocated that when condemned to be burnt alive she could not stand, and was carried in a chair to Smithfield, where she underwent her death with undaunted courage. Yes, and men and boys! For I recall the name of John Bunyan, condemned for twelve years to Bedford Gaol because he persisted in being true to himself. He left his wife and children though it almost broke his heart to leave the one who was blind. “I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you! I must do it! I must do it!” “When they beheld the boldness” of Anne Askew and John Bunyan, ‘’ they marvelled! ‘’

‘’ They took knowledge of them that they had been with Jesus.’^ That is imperfectly stated. It leaves out the essential secret. “They had been with Jesus? ‘’ N’ay, iliey were with Jesus! ‘^ I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless.” ‘’ God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble. Therefore will not we fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be shaken in the heart of the seas.’’” The Lord of hosts is with us: the God of Jacob is our refuge