The day of spiritual wonders.
I. WROUGHT IN THE HEART. Repentance. Anxious inquiry. Submission to Divine teaching. Separation from the old life. Depth of the work revealed in progressive steadfastness.
II. The fruit of HUMAN AGENCY accompanied by Divine power. Preaching, the testimony of believers, the sight of wonders, the open gate of the Church.
III. SEALED with the appointed sign of the Spirit. Baptism, both selective and consecrative in meaning. It was to separate and to unite. Save yourselves from this generation. God calls you unto him.
IV. Given in GREAT ABUNDANCE. "Three thousand souls;" as encouragement to the Church; as a sign of promise and invitation to the world; as a confirmation of the gospel; as a preparation for immediate assault upon the mass of unbelief. For though God can work with small and insignificant instrumentality, he summons his people to make great efforts.
V. The PLEDGE, PROMISE, AND PROPHECY of the world's ingathering. Nations shall be born in a day. The wonders of Pentecost may and shall be repeated, though we should not look for the repetition of the exact mode and form.
VI. The wonderful is a preparation in the spiritual world for the ORDERLY AND REGULAR. (Acts 2:42.) As soon as possible the fruits of great revivals and religious excitements should be built up into the steadfast system and abiding fellowship. In the Church God works, as in the natural world. The new and extraordinary is brought at once into relation to the continuous line of progressive life.
VII. THE ORDINANCES OF THE CHURCH stand immediately connected with its most vital point. When the spiritual life was freshest and least formalized, baptism and the Lord's Supper were observed. The antidote to sacramentarianism is not disparagement of that which the Lord himself appointed, but the closer identification of the rite with the spiritual grace which gives it reality. The true presence and operation of the Spirit is the remedy for all the evils of the professing Church; making work, prayer, teaching, fellowship, the regular and the extraordinary, all alike pure and true and heavenly.—R.