XIV.

SALVATION OUT OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH.

"Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by in terpretation is called Dorcas: this woman was full of good works and almsdeeds which she did," &c.-ACTS ix. 36.

"There was a certain man in Cæsarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band," &c.— ACTS x. 1.

Two events are connected with St. Peter's stay at Joppa: the miraculous restoration of Dorcas, and the vision which prepared for the reception of Cornelius into the Christian Church. The Apostle was at Lydda, when he was summoned by the news of the death of Dorcas to Joppa, about twelve miles distant. Now observe here the variety of the gifts which are bestowed upon the Christian Church. Four characters, exceedingly diverse, are brought before us in this ninth chapter: Paul, a man singularly gifted, morally and intellectually, with qualities more brilliant than almost ever fell to the lot of man; Peter, full of love and daring, a champion of the truth; Ananias, one of those disciples of the inward life whose vocation is sympathy, and who, by a single word, " Brother," restore light to those that sit in darkness and loneliness; lastly, Dorcas, in a humbler, but not less true sphere of divine goodness, clothing the poor with her own hands, practically loving and benevolent.

We err in the comparative estimate we form of great and small. Imagine a political economist computing the value of such a life as this of Dorcas. He views men in masses: considers the economic well-being of society on a large scale: calculates what is productive of the greatest good for the greatest number. To him the few coats and garments made for a few poor people would be an item in the world's well-being

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scarcely worthy of being taken into the reckoning. Let the historian estimate her worth. The chart of time lies unrolled before him. The fall of dynasties and the blending together of races, the wars and revolutions of nations that have successively passed across the world's stage, these are the things that occupy him. What are acts like hers in the midst of interests such as these and of contemplations so large? All this is beneath the dignity of history. Or again, let us summon a man of larger contemplations still. To the astronomer, lifting his clear eye to the order of the stars, this planet itself is but a speck. To come down from the universe to the thought of a tiny earth is a fell descent; but to descend to the thought of a humble female working at a few garments, were a fall indeed.

Now rise to the Mind of which all other minds are but emanations, and this conception of grand and insignificant is not found in His nature. Human intellect, as it rises to the great, neglects the small. The Eternal Mind condescends to the small; or, rather,with It there is neither great nor small. It has divided the rings of the earthworm with as much microscopic. care as the orbits in which the planets move: It has painted the minutest feather on the wing of the butterfly as carefully as It has hung the firmament with the silver splendor of the stars. Great and small are words which have only reference to us.

Further still, judging the matter by the heart, ascending to the heart of God, there is another aspect of the subject, great belongs only to what is moral, Infinitude and Eternity are true of feelings rather than of magnitude or space or time. The mightiest distance that mind can conceive, calculable only by the arrowflight of light, can yet be measured. The most vast of all the cycles that imagination ever wanted for the ages that are gone by, can yet be estimated by number. But tell us, if you can, the measure of a single feeling. Find for us, if you can, the computation by which we may estimate a single spiritual affection. They are

absolutely incommensurable, these things together, Magnitude and Feeling. Let the act of Dorcas be tried thus. When the world has passed away, and the lust thereof, "he that doeth the will of God abideth forever." The true Infinite, the real Eternal, is Love. When all that economist, historian, philosopher, can calculate is gone, the love of Dorcas will still be fresh and living, in the eternity of the illimitable Mind.

Observe, once more, the memorial which she left behind her. When Peter went into the upper chamber, he was surrounded by the poor widows, who showed him weeping the garments she had made. This was the best epitaph: the tears of the poor.

There is a strange jar upon the mind in the funeral, when the world is felt to be going on as usual. Traffic and pleasure do not alter when our friend lies in the

upper chamber. The great, busy world rolls on,

unheeding, and our egotism suggests the thought, So will it be when I am not. This world, whose very existence seems linked with mine, and to subsist only in mine, will not be altered by my dropping out of it. Perhaps, a few tears, and then all that follow me and love me now will dry them up again. I am but a bubble on the stream: here to-day, and then gone. This is painful to conceive. It is one of the pledges of our immortality that we long to be remembered after death, it is quite natural. Now let us inquire into its justice.

Dorcas died regretted: she was worth regretting, she was worth being restored; she had not lived in vain, because she had not lived for herself. The end of life is not a thought, but an action, action for others. But you, why should you be regretted? Have you discovered spiritual truth, like Paul? Have you been brave and true in defending it, like Peter? or cheered desolate hearts by sympathy, like Ananias? or visited the widows and the fatherless in their affliction, like Dorcas? If you have, your life will leave a trace behind which will not soon be effaced from earth. But if not, what is your worthless, self-absorbed existence

good for, but to be swept away, and forgotten as soon as possible. You will leave no record of yourself on earth, except a date of birth, and a date of death, withan awfully significant blank between.

The second event connected with St. Peter's stay at Joppa was the conversion of Cornelius.

A new doctrine was dawning on the Church. It was the universality of the love of God. The great controversy in the early history of Christianity was, not the atonement, not predestination, not even, except at first, the Resurrection, but the admissibility of the Gentiles to the Church of Christ. It was the controversy between Christianity, the universal religion, and Judaism, the limited one. Except we bear this in mind, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles will be alike unintelligible to us.

The germ of this truth had been planted by Stephen. St. Paul was now raised up as his successor, to develop it still further. So that now a very important crisis had arrived. For it has been well observed, that had St. Peter's acceptance of this truth been delayed by leaving it to gradual mental growth, the effects would have been incalculably disastrous to Christianity. A new apostle had arisen, and a new church was established at Antioch (xi. 19-26); and had St. Peter and the rest been left in their reluctance to this truth, the younger apostle would have been necessarily the leader of a party to which the elder apostles were opposed, and the Church of Antioch would have been in opposition to the Church at Jerusalem: a timely miracle, worthy of God, prevented this catastrophe: at the very crisis of time St. Peter's mind, too, was enlightened with the truth.

The vision was evidently, in its form and in its direction, the result of previous natural circumstances. The death of Stephen must have had its effect on the Apostle's mind. That truth for which he died, the transient character of Judaism, must have suggested strange new thoughts, to be pondered on and doubted of; add to this, the Apostle was in a state of hunger. In ecstasy, or trance, or vision, things meet for food

presented themselves to his mental eye. Evidently the form in which this took place was shaped by his physical cravings, the direction depended partly upon his previous thoughts concerning the opening question of the Church. But the eternal Truth, the spiritual verity conveyed by the vision, was clearly of a higher source. Here are the limits of the natural and the supernatural closely bordering on each other.

And this is only analogous to all our life. The Luman touches on the Divine, earth borders upon heaven, the limits are not definable. "I live," said St. Paul. Immediately after, he corrects himself: "yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Man's spirit prays: yet is it not " the Spirit making intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered"? As if the mind of man were hardly to be distinguished from the mind. of God. We are on the brink of the world unseen, on the very verge of the spirit-realm. Everywhere around us is God.

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Now the contents of this vision were, a vessel let down from heaven, full of animals, domestic and wild, clean and unclean. This was let down from heaven, and taken up to heaven again. All had come from God, so that the truth conveyed was clear enough. These distinctions of clean and unclean were but conventional and artificial after all, temporal arrangements, not belonging to the unalterable. God had made all and given all. The analogy was not difficult to perceive. God is the Creator of mankind. He is the universal Father. All have come from him. Sanctified by him, there can be no man common or unclean.

Against even the first part of this St. Peter's mind. revolted, "Not so, Lord." It is not a little remarkable that the two first to whom this expansive truth was revealed were bigoted men: St. Paul the Jewish, St. Peter the Christian bigot. For St. Peter was a Christian, yet a bigot still. Is this wonderful and rare? or are we not all bigots in our way, the largest-minded of us all? St. Peter was willing to admit a proselyte: the