It may seem peculiar for Peter to have made this statement (Acts 10:34,35) as to the vast majority of reverent minds it goes without saying. But to Peter, brought up as he had been among Pharisees and Sad-ducees and other religionists of the Old Dispensation, whose central belief was that God was a respecter of persons, the discovery of the great truth that God cares for all alike, came as a great awakening. The Pharisee who loved the uppermost seats in the synagogues and greetings in the market-places; who deliberately shunned contact with a publican, a woman or a Gentile, represented that self-righteous and exclusive Judaism in which no one else counted, but in which he was a favorite of the Most High. This exclusive Judaism Peter annihilated with the one sentence of the text, and thereby established the belief in that great, universal Fatherhood which, while it is all to all, is especially kind to the lowly and the meek; which watches even a sparrow and numbers even the hair of our heads. And because of this universal Fatherhood, everyone in every nation "that feareth him and doeth righteousness" is acceptable to him. He makes no distinctions of creeds, of theologies, of usages and customs, of observances and differences of opinions.
