The life and work of St. Paul

THE SAMABITANS THE EUNUCH THE CENTURION. 151
roots P were not- its
primary conceptions of Christianity cut away at the very
most beautiful and essential institutions rendered impossible P How could
there be lore-feasts, how could there be celebrations of the Lord's Supper, how
could there be the beautiful spectacle of Christian love and Christian unity, if
the Church was to be composed, not of members joined together in equal
brotherhood, but of a proletariate of tolerated Gentiles, excluded even from
the privilege of eating with an aristocracy of superior Jews P Dim and
dwarfed and maimed did such an ideal look beside the grand conception of the
redeemed nations of the world coming to Sion, singing, and with everlasting
joy upon their heads !
And behind all these uncertainties towered a yet vaster and more eternal
question. Christ had died to take away the sins of the world ; what need,
then, could there be of sacrifices ? What significance could there be any more
in the shadow, when the substance had been granted? l Where was the mean-
ing of types, after they had been fulfilled in the glorious Antitype P What
use was left for the lamp of the Tabernacle when the Sun of Righteousness
had risen with healing in His wings ?
Such thoughts, such problems, such perplexities, pressing for a decided
principle which should guide men in their course of action amid multiplying difficulties, must inevitably have occupied, at this
daily
period, the
thoughts of many of the brethren. In the heart of Peter they must have assumed
yet more momentous proportions, because on him in many respects the
initiative would depend. 8 The destinies of the world during centuries of his-
tory the question whether, ere that brief aeon closed, the inestimable benefits
of the Life and Death of Christ should be confined to the sectaries of an
obsolete covenant and a perishing nationality, or extended freely to all the
races of mankind the question whether weary generations should be forced
to accept the peculiarities of a Semitic tribe, or else look for no other refuge
than the shrines of Isis or the Stoa of Athens all depended, humanly speak-
ing, on the line which should be taken by one who claimed no higher earthly
intelligence than that of a Jewish fisherman. But God always chooses His
own fitting instruments. In the decision of momentous questions rectitude
of heart is a far surer guarantee of wisdom than power of intellect. When
the unselfish purpose is ready to obey, the supernatural illumination is never
wanting. When we desire only to do what is right, it is never long before we
"
hear the voice behind us saying, This is the way, walk ye in it," however
much we might be otherwise inclined to turn aside to the right hand or to the
left.
With such uncertainties in his heart, but also with such desire to bo guided
aright, one day at noon Peter mounted to the flat roof of the tanner's house
for his mid-day prayer. 3
It is far from impossible that the house may have
l 1 Cor. xiil. 10: CoL il. 17 ; Heb. x. L
" Lo maggior Padre di famiglia " (Dante, Pafad. xxxii. 136).
s Matt. x. 27 ; xziv. 17 ; Luke xvii, 31. House-tops in old days had been the common
scenes of idol-worship (Jer. xix. 13 ; Zeph. i. 5,