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As Jesus went before us all, in our sorrows, difficulties, and holiest joys, so, even if in less degree, his first apostles went before us in very many experiences of the first preaching of the gospel with which we are now perfectly well acquainted. The successes and the bitter disappointments of the Christian preacher are at this very time keenly felt by Paul, and other of the solemn phenomena lie open before him, and observed by him evidently with very pained observation, were treated by him in a way full of instruction for ourselves. The short but speaking comment of this verse, on Paul's first preaching of the gospel of Christ in Rome, though no doubt on this occasion almost exclusively to his own people the Jews, is exceedingly worthy of our notice. We may notice these typical effects of the gospel of Christ faithfully preached.

I. IT EXCITES THE STIR OF LIFE.

II. IT EXCITES A PECULIAR KIND OF STIR OF LIFE. It is not the life of mind alone. It is not like the interest that gathers quickly round the finest discoveries and investigatings of science. It has another unmistakable element, and one that refuses to be at all ignored, a certain moral element. Very quickly does it beg to be informed whether men "believe" or do "not believe." And it states that on this everything turns.

III. IT EXHIBITS INVARIABLY (?) AMID GREAT VARIETIES IN OTHER RESPECTS ONE UNIFORM PHENOMENON - SOME TAKE IT, OTHERS REFUSE IT. It is then that the Christian preacher, and the Christian man whoever he is, stands in the presence of the grandest, deepest, most inscrutable mystery beneath the sun - this, that the gospel of God's love in Christ presumably to be eagerly and intelligently seized by every man, sooner than the bread on which he feeds, is taken by some, is rejected by others. "Some believed... and some believed not!" - B.

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KJV: And some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.

WEB: Some believed the things which were spoken, and some disbelieved.