It was not so much what Peter and John said that astonished the Council, as the fact of their being composed and bold enough to say anything.
A great deal more is done by character than by anything else. Most people in the world take their notions of Christianity from its concrete embodiments in professing Christians. For one man that has read his Bible, and has come to know what religion is thereby, there are a hundred that look at you and me, and therefrom draw their conclusions as to what religion is. It is not my sermons, but your life, that is the most important agency for the spread of the Gospel in this congregation. And if we, as Christian people, were to live so as to make men say, Dear me, that is strange. That is not the kind of thing that one would have expected from that man. That is of a higher strain than he is of. Where did it come from, I wonder?' All, he learned it of that Jesus '--if people were constrained to speak in thatstyle to themselves about us, dear friends, and about all our brethren, England would be a different England from what it is to-day. It is Christians' lives, after all, that make dints in the world's conscience.
Do you remember one of the Apostle's lovely and strong metaphors? Paul says that that little Church in Thessalonica rung out clear and strong the name of Jesus Christ--resonant like the clang of a bugle, so that we need not to speak anything.' The word that he employs for sounded out' is a technical expression for the ringing blast of a trumpet. Very small penny whistles would be a better metaphor for the instruments which the bulk of professing Christians play on.
Adorn the doctrine of Christ.' And that you may, listen to His own word, which says all I have been trying to say in this sermon: Abide in Me. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in Me.'
