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1. The main purpose of the Acts is to unfold the broadening spirit and form of the Church of God. It is a history of transition. On its first page the Christ ascends. As the heavens, into which He rises, overarch the whole world, so His gospel spreads its wings for its worldwide flight. Soon the Spirit breathes upon the apostles, and they begin to act under an inspiration as free and wide as the wind that typifies it. On every page some barrier gives way; with every line the horizon broadens. One feels as if sailing in a great ship, under a bounding breeze, out of a narrow harbour into the wide sea.

2. With this change of scene there is corresponding change of personal attitude; conversions not only in character, but in opinion; it is a record not only of repenting and turning, but of broadening. Valuable as this book is as a record of events, it is more valuable as introducing the life of the Spirit, and as showing how the faith of ages develops into liberty and the full life and thought of humanity.

3. The incident before us is a happy illustration of this in its assurance of possible sainthood outside of the Church, yet showing its hard conditions, telling us how the centurion's devout aspirations carried him into the realm of vision, and brought upon him an inspiration greater than any that came upon his blind yearnings after righteousness. Here also is a somewhat similar experience of Peter. Sleep is not vacant of spiritual impression. Into that mystery the Spirit may come as unto its own, and say what it could not when the man is hedged about with wakeful and watchful powers. Shakespeare puts the deepest moral experiences of men into their dreams.

4. Notice how God not only enlarges and broadens the views of these men, but does this in the direction of Himself. For there is an enlargement of view that is mere breadth without height; it grows wise over matter and force, creeps but never soars, deeming the heights above to be empty. In preceding centuries the mind shot upward, but within narrow limits. There was no look abroad; nature was simply to be used as found, not studied for further uses. Hence, there was great familiarity with the lore of religion, but dense ignorance of the laws of matter and of human society. Today the reverse is true. It is interesting to note how this tendency pervades classes that apparently do not influence one another: thus the scientific class and the lighter literary class; neither reads the works of the other, yet in each we find the same study of matter and man, and the same ignoring of God and the spiritual nature. Or, compare the man of universal culture with the average man of the world, who reads the newspaper, and keeps his eyes open on the street: the latter knows little of the former, yet we find them holding nearly the same opinions about God and the faith, vague and indifferent; but both are very observant of what is about them. And all this is for some wise end. It had become necessary that man should have a better knowledge of the world, and of his relations to it and to society. Hence his attention is directed thither by a Divine and guiding inspiration, and no thinking man can be exempt from it. The only danger is lest the tendency become excessive, and we forget to look upward in our eagerness to see what is about us. It is the office of Christian thought to temper and restrain these monopolising tendencies and secure a proper balance between them. "God fulfils Himself in many ways, lest one good custom should corrupt the world."

5. I have fallen into this train of thought by reflecting how God led Peter away from his small notions of religion, and brought him into a higher and larger conception of Himself. As we read the story we wonder at the readiness and ease with which Peter gave up old habits of thought and entered into new ones. What is the explanation?

I. IT IS IN THE NATURE OF RELIGIOUS CHANGES THAT THEY SHALL OCCUR SUDDENLY. There may be, there must be, long seasons of preparation, but the transition is instantaneous. Saul goes a-persecuting, and a light above the sun's dazzles him into instant submission. The Holy Spirit comes like a rushing wind upon the disciples, and in an hour they are new men. The jailer hears and believes in a night. Luther, while toiling up the holy stairs, holding to salvation by works, drops that scheme on the way, and lays hold of the higher one of salvation by faith. Ignatius Loyola in a dream has sight of the Mother of Christ, and awakes a soldier of Jesus. It is often so. We do not so much grow into the possession of new spiritual truths as we awake to them. Their coming is not like the sunrise that slowly discloses the shapes and relations of things, but is like the lightning that illuminates earth and sky in one quick flash, and so imprints them forever on the vision. Character is of slow and steady growth, but the revelations of truth that inspire character are sudden. A new outlook is gained, and the man is changed, as, in climbing a mountain, it is some sharp turn in the path that reveals the new prospect which inspires the onward march. Some can affirm that it was in a moment that the charm of poetry, the pleasurable consciousness of thought, the passion of love, the dignity of manhood, the obligation of service, the sense of the Divine goodness, came upon them.

II. PETER GOT SIGHT OF LARGER AND MORE SPIRITUAL TRUTHS THAN HE HAD BEEN HOLDING. When what claim to be truths are of equal proportion, we balance them, or try one and then the other; but as soon as one asserts itself as larger and finer we accept it instantly. Peter had been used to believing that God was a respecter of persons, but when he caught sight of the fact that God has no partialities, his true-loving nature rushed at once toward the greater truth.

1. We have an appetence for new spiritual truth, and take to it readily. This does not imply that we are to go about peering into the corners of the universe to find new truths, nor that we are to sit down and manufacture them. Truth already exists; there is now all there ever will be. All we have to do is to take it; to hold ourselves open to it; to do God's will, and we shall know it. The fundamental Christian idea is God seeking man, not man seeking God. We make but a poor figure when we attempt to think out a religion. It is not a search after God, but a revelation of God. We ourselves can find nothing. The main thing for us to do is to get out of the caves of sin and self-conceit into the open air, where the sun shines and the Spirit breathes.

2. There is also in such truth a self-attesting power that tends to secure instant reception. When one comes to me with a new machine, or a new theory of government, or of matter, or life, I hesitate; but when I see a new disclosure of the Divine love, or a fresh exhibition of humility and patience, or of some new adaptation of Christianity to human society, I at once believe. It is simply another candle brought into a lighted room.

3. This self-attesting quality goes farther and becomes commanding. Peter says, "God hath showed me that I should not call any man common or unclean." It is one of the subtle workings of all high truth that it vests itself, as by some instinct, with the Divine attributes.

4. I have had in mind thus far not any new truths, but rather a fresh and expanding vision of other sides of many-sided truth. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as new truth; but there is such a thing as fresh sight of the truth. We can hardly do anything worse for our moral growth than to hold it in such a way that it may not change its form. Not that one is to hold his faith as in a constant flux, or suffer himself to be blown about by every new wind of doctrine, but rather that he should attain the two-fold attitude of alertness and passivity: passive to the Spirit that is ever breathing upon us, and alert to note and follow the unfolding revelation of God in the world.

III. HAVING SPOKEN GENERALLY, I SHALL NOW SPEAK MORE PARTICULARLY OF SOME OF THESE TRUTHS. To call attention to this intermingling of permanent and changing qualities.

1. Take that of the Trinity. It has another look today from that it wore a hundred years ago. It is the characteristic thought of God at present that He is immanent in all created things, yet personal, the life of all lives, the soul of the universe. With such a conception of God, it becomes easy to see how there should be a Son of man who is also the Son of God, and a Spirit everywhere present and acting — a paternal heart and will at the centre, a Sonship that stands for humanity, a spiritual Energy that is the life of men, and through which they come into freedom and righteousness. This conception of God may be brought into the category of science, and even be required by it.

2. So of the atonement: it has always been putting on new forms and yielding a richer life. It is the most elastic of the doctrines, and we are getting to understand it as containing the law and method of life for every man: "He that loseth his life for My sake shall find it."

3. So also of regeneration. It has been held simply as a moral necessity, having its basis in sin; but we are beginning to see that Christ taught it also as a psychological necessity. We must be born again, not merely because we are wicked, but because we are flesh and need to be carried forward and lifted up into the realm of the spirit, — a constructive rather than a reconstructive process.

4. In the same way the doctrine of Divine sovereignty is resolving into the universality of law. Science, with its doctrine of an original, ultimate force, advances more than half way towards this assaulted truth.

5. Or take the doctrine of sin, its inheritance and its relation to the personal will. The doctrine of heredity as found in the pages of science, the doctrine of freedom as found in the pages of philosophy and the observation of life, yield nearly all we care to claim.

6. So, too, of the miracles. Modern intelligence has grown so wide that it embraces both law and miracle in one harmony. No one now defines one as the violation of the other. An assertion of "the reign of law" does not disturb us so long as we are conscious of the hourly miracles wrought by personality.

7. Take next retribution. It will never be denied so long as men have eyes to trace cause and effect. Just now we are finding out that it is not a matter of future time, but of all time; an eternally acting principle. The true preacher of retribution makes it clear that the wages of sin is death, and emphasises the two features of retribution that alone are effective, its nearness and its certainty.

8. Take the inspiration of the Bible. There is not now, and probably never will be, any generally accepted theory, simply because inspiration cannot be so compassed; as Christ said, "Thou canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth." It is the breathing of God upon the soul. We are getting to speak less of the inspired book, and more of the inspired men who wrote it. The revelation, therefore, will have a two-fold character: it will be Divine and human, the one conditioning the other; not an imperfection, but rather the only kind of revelation that could serve our needs, for the line of revelation from God to man must run through the human heart. But without a theory, we are reading the Bible with fuller faith than ever before. The more light we bring to it from nature and study and experience, the clearer its truths stand out; in such light it is becoming its own evidence, and no more needs an apologetic theory than a candle needs an argument for illumination.

IV. BUT A THOUGHTFUL MIND WILL ASK, HOW HAPPENS IT THAT CHRISTIANITY HAS THIS TWO-FOLD FEATURE of a permanent essence and a shifting form? The answer will take him into that world of thought recently opened, the main feature of which is the law of development. The timid may linger on the threshold, but once in, the atmosphere is found friendly. It is not something to be quelled, but an ally to be pressed into service. What it does for every other department of thought it may do for the faith — open another door between the mystery of the external order and the human reason. Recognising this principle, we can read the Old Testament, and need no other explanation or apology than it affords. The sayings of the Christ become principles and revelations of eternal truth. The mustard seed, the leaven, etc., not only fall in with the principle, but attest Christ's absolute knowledge of it. It will be noticed that the reception of new truth has been spoken of in two ways that are apparently contradictory: one as quick and as by instant revelation; the other gradual, a growth or development. They are not inconsistent, but represent the two-fold nature of truth as having a Divine source and element and a human ground and element, and the two-fold nature of man as spirit and mind. These methods play into each other. One prepares the way for the other. One is slow, and keeps pace with the gradual advance of society and a like development of the individual. The other is quick, is allied to the mysterious action of the Spirit, which knows not time nor space, and accords with the loftiest action of our nature. I gain knowledge slowly; I gain the meaning of knowledge instantly.

(T. T. Munger.)

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KJV: Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:

WEB: Peter opened his mouth and said, "Truly I perceive that God doesn't show favoritism;