only have said by the gift of prophecy; for he was not in heaven to hear the language, but was now lying in the grave.

36. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.

Not lord of the whole creation, a title which belongs to Jehovah alone, but the lord just spoken of in the prophecy of David; his lord or superior, or the head of the Christian church.

REFLECTIONS.

master.

1. Let Christians rejoice in the exaltation of their He who was treated with contempt and scorn by the world, who was condemned and crucified as a malefactor, is raised to a post of the highest dignity and honour, the honour of bestowing upon men those miraculous powers by which superstition, idolatry and vice were to be overthrown; and by which virtue, truth and righteousness were to be established in the world. A glorious prince, more honourable than any who occupied the throne of his father David! A happy triumph, not obtained by blood and slaughter and the many evils of war, but by the sacred energy of truth; the willing subjection of the mind to laws which it approves! It is the emancipation of slaves from the tyranny of vice. Such a triumph is as honourable for the vanquished as for the victor. Let us rejoice that our master has obtained the joy set before him, the glory which he desired, the only object worthy of the ambition of a truly virtuous and benevolent mind, that of conferring upon mankind the most extensive blessings. He has now a name given.

him above every name; he stands first in the list of virtuous characters and of the benefactors of the human race. And well does he deserve this distinction; for although in the form of God, although possessed of a power of working miracles at pleasure like God, he restrained the exercise of this power, and took upon himself the form of a servant, and became obedient to death, the death of the cross.

2. After beholding the exaltation of Jesus, let none of his followers be discouraged from persevering in the path of virtue. Whatever difficulties you have to contend with you will one day surmount; whatever afflictions it may seem fit to Divine Providence that you should now endure, they shall at length be exchanged for joy. Never can your condition be more unpromising than that of your master was. In his reward and triumph you may see a pledge of your own. is a faithful saying, "If we be dead with Christ we shall live with him; if we suffer we shall also reign with him;" but "if we deny him he will deny us."

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3. If Jesus is made lord in his church, let us be careful to render him due obedience in that character. Let us take our rule of faith from his gospel, without adding thereto or taking from it. In matters of religion let us submit to his authority alone. To follow the imaginations of our minds, or to receive the dictates of fellow-creatures, whether one or a greater number, is to renounce the allegiance which we owe to Christ, and to chuse another master. Such conduct cannot fail to be highly offensive to him, as well as injurious to his religion.

Acts ii. 37. to the end.

In the former part of the chapter we have an account of the extraordinary miracle of the gift of tongues, of the multitude which it brought together, and of Peter's vindication of himself and of his fel

low-apostles from the insinuation thrown out against them by some who did not understand their language, that the whole was the effect of intoxication; showing that it was an hour of the day when such an effect could not be expected; that such an extraordinary effusion of miraculous powers had been foretold by the prophet Joel, and the resurrection of Jesus, from whom these powers proceeded, by a writer in the book of Psalms. The historian now proceeds to give an account of the impression made upon the multitude by this miracle, and the reasoning of Peter upon the subject.

37. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart," to the heart," and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

How shall we escape the calamities which are coming upon the Jewish nation, and repair the error which we have committed in rejecting and crucifying the Messiah? By the quotations which Peter made from Joel, in which the prophet speaks of the sun being turned into darkness and the moon into blood, and of blood and fire and vapour of smoke preceding the terrible day of the Lord, which the apostle applied to the present occasion, they understand that great and uncommon evils were about to befal their country, and they are anxious to be informed in what manner they might be delivered from it themselves. This Peter tells them in the next verse.

38. Then Peter said unto them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins: and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The repentance to which Peter here exhorts his hearers, is not a general reformation of character and conduct, although the word sometimes undoubtedly has that meaning, but a change of principles upon a particular subject, namely, the divine mission of Jesus. Nor does the remission of sins, here promised as the consequence of repentance and baptism, signify the removal of moral guilt in general, but merely a recovery from that sinful state to which all men, whether Jews or Gentiles, are represented as being reduced, so long as they are out of the Christian covenant. This sense of the word repentance occurs in other parts of the book of Acts, as xvii. 20. "But the times of this ignorance God winked at," where heathen idolatry is spoken of, "but now commandeth all men every where to repent;" that is, to abandon their idolatrous errors, and to embrace the Christian religion. And in the same manner, xxvi. 20. when Paul says of himself to Agrippa that he showed first to them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and then to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance, he means that they should forsake their errors as Jews or heathens, receive the Christian religion which God now offered to them, and walk in a manner becoming their new profession. The remission of sins is here connected with baptism, in the same manner as, in other passages, with the blood of Christ; not because the one, any more than the other, removed the guilt arising from the commission of crimes, but because men who were before reckoned sinners ceased to be esteemed so upon their profession of the Christian religion, or upon their entering into the Christian covenant. It may be further observed on this passage, that men are exhorted to be baptized into the name of Christ only; which affords a strong presumption that this was the original form of baptism; and that the Holy Spirit is called a gift, which implies that it was a power and not a person. This gift was usually bestowed upon believers in early times, and was regarded as a proof of their being the covenant-people of God.

39.

For the promise, i. e. of the Holy Spirit, is unto you and to your children, "to your offspring," and to all that are afar off, to the Jews in foreign countries, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

By "afar off," some suppose Peter to refer to the Gentiles, who are so described by the apostle Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians, where, speaking of Gentiles and Jews, he calls them those who were afar off and those who were nigh. But Peter could have no idea of the communication of miraculous powers to the Gentiles at this time; for it required an express revelation from God to instruct him in that part of the Christian dispensation. His design was evidently to encourage the Jews to expect miraculous powers upon the profession of Christianity, because the promise of the Spirit had been made to them and to their offspring, in whatever part of the world dispersed, to whom the gospel was offered. This was part, but by no means the whole, of what Peter said to them on the present occasion; for he instructed them further in the Christian religion, and exhorted them, by embracing it, to save themselves from impending calamities.

40.

And with many other words did he testify, i. e. bear testimony to the truth of Christianity, and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.

It appeared, from the above prophecies of Joel, that dreadful calamities were threatened to the Jews, and that the time for inflicting them was now arrived, because the miraculous powers which were foretold as Vol. 3.]

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