The life and work of St. Paul

ST. PETEB AND THE FIRST PENTECOST, 51
" 1 house" might equally mean a " chamber," and is actually used by Josephus
of tho thirty small chambers which were attached to the sides of Solomon's
Temple, with thirty more above them. 2 But it is supremely improbable
that the poor and suspected disciples should have been able to command
tho use of such a room ; and further, it is certain that if, in the Herodian
temple, these rooms were no larger than those in the Temple of Solomon.,
the size of even the lower ones would have been wholly inadequate for the
accommodation of so large a number. Tho meeting was probably one of those
holy and simple meala which were afterwards known among Christians as the
Agapce, or Love feasts. It need hardly be added that any moral significance
which might attach to the occurrence of the event in the Temple would be no
less striking if we think of the sign of a new era as having hallowed the
common street and the common dwelling-place ; as the visible inauguration of
the days in which neither on Zion nor on Gerizim alone were men to worship
the Father, but to worship Him everywhere in spirit and in truth. 8
It is this inward significance of the event which constitutes its sacredness
and importance. Its awfulness consists in its being the solemn beginning of
the new and final phase of God's dealings with mankind. To Abraham He
gave a promise which was the germ of a religion. When He called His people
from Egypt He gave them the Moral Law and that Levitical Law which was
to serve as a bulwark for the truths of the theocracy. During the two
thousand years of that Mosaic Dispensation the Tabernacle and the Temple
had been a visible sign of His presence. Then, for the brief periqd of the life
of Christ on earth, He had tabernacled among men, dwelling in a tent like ours
and of the same material. 4 That mortal body of Christ, in a sense far deeper
than could be true of any house built with hands, was a Temple of God. Last
of all, He who had given to mankind His Son to dwell among them, gave His
Spirit into their very hearts. More than this He could not give ; nearer than
this He could not be. Henceforth His Temple was to be the mortal body of
every baptised Christian, and His Spirit was to prefer
u Before all temples the upright heart and pure."
He who believes this in all the fulness of its meaning, he whose heart and
conscience bear witness to its truth, will consider in its true aspect the fulfilment
of Christ's promise in the effusion of His Spirit; and regarding the
outward wonder as the least marvellous part of the Day of Pentecost, will not,
as Neander says, be tempted to explain the greater by the less, or " consider
it strange that the most wonderful event in the inner life of mankind should
be accompanied by extraordinary outward appearances as sensible indications
of its existence." 6
Suddenly, while their hearts burned within them with such ardent zeal, and
glowed with suck enkindled hope suddenly on the rapt and expectant
i Acts a. 2, oW. Jos. Antt. viii 3, 2. * John iv. 2123.
* Archbishop Leighton, John i. 14, 6 Ayo;