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1. We wonder what speech Paul wilt now make. Will he enter into some learned argument and confound his hearers by his heavenly eloquence? The audience is unlike any other audience he has ever addressed, and he is now in the metropolis of the land. What is his defence? He tells over again the story of his conversion, and nothing more. The sublimity of that act is without parallel. Here is no argument, criticism, erudition, but a simple statement of facts; the application being: "After this, what could I do"?

2. We wondered how the old story of the conversion was bearing the wear and tear of apostolic life; the answer is before us. Having gone down into the city and into the wilderness, and over the sea; having been beaten, stoned, imprisoned, the apostle ends just where he began: by telling the simple experience of his own soul. The story is just the same. Sometimes imagination plays havoc with memory; and throws its own colour upon the simplest facts of early life, and we begin to regard those facts as a dream. This is particularly the case with the religious imagination; it leads us to disown our early selves, to regard our first prayers as passionate and sentimental rather than as sober and vital. It is interesting, therefore, to find that Paul, after all the manifold experience of a missionary's life, repeats the old story exactly as it occurred in the early part of his life. Paul laced and kept both his feet on the rock of facts which had occurred in his own knowledge.

3. Christianity is not to be defended by mere argument, by the able use of elegant terms and subtle phrases; it does not challenge the world to a battle of opinions. Christianity is an incarnation; it stands up in its own living men, and says, "This is my work; the controversy which I have with the world is this: produce your men and I will produce mine." The tree is known by its fruit. If the Church would stand firmly to this one point, there need be no controversy. If in an unfortunate mood you refer to some other man's case, you may be perplexed by some cross inquiry as to the order of the facts; but if you keep to your own self there is no answer.

4. The recital Paul called his "defence." The defence of Christianity is not a book but a man — not an argument but a life. Of course we shall be told about the shortcomings of Christians. So be it; and still the truth remains that Christians are the defence of Christianity. You tell me that London is a healthy city! Come with me to the hospitals and I will show you every disease known in this climate. Come with me from house to house, and in nearly everyone I will find you someone sick. That kind of argument would not be admitted on sanitary questions; yet the very men who would probably reject it upon the ground of a physical kind, might be tempted to use it in relation to Christians. There are sick Christians, Christian cripples; and yet it remains true that even the weakest Christian may have about him the peculiar sign manual of heaven.

5. Here, then, is the plain line along which we must move when called upon for our defence. "Men, brethren, and fathers," says some poor old mother in the Church, "hear ye my defence. I was left in difficulty and trouble and sorrow; I knew not where to turn: I sat down and felt the pain of utter helplessness, when suddenly I heard a voice saying unto me, 'Pray to thy Father in heaven.' I never had prayed just in the right way; but, at that moment, my eye brightened with hope, and I fell down, and asked the Lord to show me what He would have me to do. Suddenly there was a great light around me, and a hand took hold of mine, and ever since I have felt that I am not an orphan, but under fatherly superintendence." Sweet old mother! sit down; the philosophers can never answer that. Have you no tale to tell about the dark and friendless days; the sudden suggestion that stirred the mind; the inspiration like a flash of light at midnight; the key which has unlocked every gate ever since? Stand up and tell your tale. Let me not hear your opinions and views and speculations — keep them to yourself; but when we call for your defence read out of the pages of your heart. Herein is the secret of ardent preaching.

6. A converted man is one who is completely turned right round in every act, motive, impulse, and purpose; one who was travelling east, but is now marching straight towards the west. You could tell what turned you round — it was a death, a grief, a reading of the Book, a sermon, a singular providence, the hearing of a hymn, the touch of a child, the feeling of an inward agony. That is your defence; it is not mine; it is not another man's, probably. Every man has his own view of God, his own conception of the Cross.

7. We want more personal experience in the Church. Herein the idea of some Christian communions is sound: that we should meet one another periodically, and audibly say what God has done for the soul. And, judging by apostolic history and precedent, nothing is so convincing, so satisfactory, as for the soul to tell its own story, in its own words, and when the soul does that, the best of all sermons will be preached. Each can say, who has known Christ's ministry in the soul, "Once I was blind; now I see."

(J. Parker, D. D.)

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KJV: Men, brethren, and fathers, hear ye my defence which I make now unto you.

WEB: "Brothers and fathers, listen to the defense which I now make to you."