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This verse is of interest as involving the condition of all success, which in every line of occupation is made out of power converged upon an object. Means in our hand, an end in our eye, resources and purposes, are the alpha and omega of success. Our failures, therefore, are due sometimes to our attempting too much, but our saddest failures are due to the indecision of our aim. Men, especially in the higher relations of life, are unproductive, not because they are feeble, but because they are purposeless. A purpose lying athwart the track of a man's energies is what a burning glass is lying across the path of the sunbeam, a means of tension and the pledge of result. At this solemn moment, then, in which Christ turns over mankind into the hands of the eleven, His last service is to tell them of the power which shall be wrought in them by the Holy Ghost, and what they shall do with it. Christ had spent three years and a half in making Himself the most real of all real things, and now as He ascends He says, "What is real to you, go out into the midst of men and make real to them; and so soon as the power of the Holy Ghost is come upon you, ye shall be witnesses unto Me," etc. On this basis there are some things proper to be addressed to —

I. CHRISTIANS AS INDIVIDUALS. The science of mechanics is reducible to statics which concerns itself with forces in equilibrium, and dynamics which treats of forces in motion. One gives us physical condition; the other physical agency. The New Testament is an inspired treatise on spiritual mechanics, and expounds the doctrines of spiritual statics and dynamics, and exhibits to us Christianity as a splendid equilibrium of the soul, and as an energy that upsets equilibrium. The trouble with a great many of our Christians is that they never get beyond the statics. They stop with Christianity as an inward composure. They do not reach the point of seizing Christ s peace, and hurling it in all its holy equipoise into the midst of unholy men to their unutterable discomposure. They stop with reading the Four Gospels of condition without going on to read the fifth Gospel of "Acts." And if we have not the serenity of spirit which the apostles had, and the same passionate ambition to make Christ a reality in the minds and hearts of those about us, it is not because we are not their equals, but because we have not let Christ become as real to us. If they had stopped with being disciples, then we should have said that Christianity meant nothing but discipleship. But inasmuch as they went on from being absorbent disciples to radiant apostles, then Christianity means purpose as much as power; making others Christians as much as being Christians ourselves. These things when prayerfully considered will create a deep sense of individual responsibility. The anointing of the Holy Ghost sets each one of us in the line of the true apostolic succession; and, as after the ascension of Christ mankind lay in the hands of the original apostles for them to convert, so to-day the conversion of the world pertains to us as their spiritual successors. If each Christian were to make one convert each year, within eight years the whole population of the globe would be at the foot of the Cross!

II. CHRISTIANS IN THE ASSOCIATE RELATION OF A CHURCH. Individual Christianity means individual apostleship. What advantage does Christianity gain by being organised?

1. Negatively. A church does not exist, properly —

(1) for the sake of its sanctuary ministrations. Supposing that after the ascension the apostles had made the Church to consist as a permanency, in praying and singing and preaching to each other once a week. But there are churches where spiritual laziness is induced by excess of sanctuary nourishment, and who do not bestir themselves sufficiently to prevent even the bread of life from working within them as a slow and subtle poison. There are churches that have had the gospel preached to them for fifty years, and yet have not begun to produce such a flame as was kindled within fifteen days after the Lord's ascension.

(2) For the sake of sustaining its weaker members. Of course there is a great deal that it ought to do in that direction. Christ said to Peter, "When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren." But a large number of those who now apply for admission to the Church want, not to strengthen the brethren, but to have the brethren strengthen them. When an army is quartered in the enemy's country, the safest place is inside of the camp; but a regiment recruited for the purpose of having its members protect each other is a poor addendum to the fighting resources of the brigade. We learn heroism in the face of danger; children learn to swim by being thrown into the water; and the original Church never flinched after once it had taken up its position in the open field.

(3) For the sake of its denomination. Denomination is harness worn by us for the purpose of dragging the chariot of the gospel. It may chafe some — all harness is liable to — but it is a necessity. Still the harness exists for the sake of the chariot, and not the chariot for the sake of the harness; and he serves his denomination best who serves the Church of Christ best.

2. Positively. By indicating what the Church does not exist for, we have already implied the object for which it does exist. A Church, as an efficiency of God for the conversion of men, is the interweaving of the individual strands of strength fused into a solid bolt of force and hurled at the adversaries of the Lord; and no desultory skirmishing of individual Christians will begin to take the place of the grand concentrated bombardment of a confederate Church. We regularly proceed upon that principle in the achievement of large secular results. We organise for purposes of government, warfare, improvement, revolution, and discovery. Why not for Christ?

(C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)

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KJV: But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

WEB: But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth."