things which

we speak freely to you of the concern your everlasting peace. We dare not be silent, as we have to answer for it to Him, when we see your eternal salvation in hazard.

The courage and fidelity of the Apostles were met by a devoted, ardent zeal, a self-denying, active charity, on the part of their hearers. That was indeed a golden age of the Church, such an age as will no more return, till the kingdom of Christ shall be finally established, when the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul; neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed were his own, but they had all things common.* It is however proper to remark, that an absolute community of goods, although it existed, in a certain sense, amongst the first company of believers, was not insisted upon by the Apostles, as a necessary feature in the constitution of the Christian Church; and indeed, on an extensive scale, would not have been politic, had it been possible. We find many precepts in the Epistles, which distinctly recognize the difference of rich and poor, and mark out the respective duties of each class; and St. Paul, in particular, far from enforcing a community of goods, enjoins those

* Acts iv. 32.

·

who were well off in the world, to make a contribution every week for those who were poorer. Yet the spirit of this primitive system should pervade the Church in all ages. All Christians ought to consider their worldly goods, in a certain sense, as the common property of their brethren. A certain part they may and ought to appropriate to the support and convenience of themselves and theirs, and even, it may be, to the maintenance of that rank which the subordination of society makes it expedient that they should fill: but there is a part, which by the laws of God and nature belongs to their brethren; who, if they cannot implead them for its wrongful detention before an earthly tribunal, have their right and title to it written by the finger of God himself in the records of the Gospel, and will see it established at the judgment-day.

Amongst those evangelical virtues and graces, in which the Church of these days presents but a faint and cold adumbration of the primitive household of faith, I fear there is not any in which we fall more short of the original than in charity. Let no man congratulate himself upon having attained the fulness and perfectness

* 1 Cor. xvi. 2, 3.

*

of Christian charity, till he can say with sincerity, and exemplify that sincerity in his deeds, that nought that he possesses is his own, but that he has all things for the common advantage of himself and his brethren.

He, who has given us the good things of this life, does not peremptorily enjoin upon us the sacrifice of all we possess; nor did he even in the time of the Apostles. The liberality of the first believers was a spontaneous liberality; and the giving up of all that they had, was not an indispensable proof of their fellowship with the saints. But what is given in the name of Christian charity, as an offering to God, for and through Christ, must be given freely and sincerely, from pure unmixed motives, not with a desire to obtain the credit of liberality; and with no vain attempt to impose upon our own consciences, and to make a compromise with God, by pretending to offer him as much as we can afford to give, when we might and ought to We read the punish

give a great deal more. ment of such an endeavour in the fate of Ananias and Sapphira, who pretended a devotion to the cause of the Gospel which they did not feel, and made a fatal attempt to unite the services of *Acts iv. 32.

God and Mammon. The punishment was severe : but the state of the infant Church required the immediate rebuke of every hypocritical pretence to the character of a true believer, and a signal demonstration of that indwelling of the Spirit, which enabled the Apostles to search the hearts and judge of the sincerity of such professors. The sin of Ananias was of a complicated kind ;vainglory and covetousness, impiety and fraud. He expected to purchase for himself both a share in the Church's distribution of its common stock, and a participation in the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, which were then vouchsafed to believers. On this account, and because he attempted to deceive those holy men upon whom the Spirit of truth had so lately descended in a visible shape, his sin was termed lying unto the Holy Ghost, and tempting the Spirit of the Lord. In fact it appears, that Ananias and Sapphira could not have believed in their hearts that the Apostles were actually endued with the gifts of the Spirit, or they would not have ventured upon an attempt to deceive them.

The effect of that awful display of the divine indignation against religious hypocrisy, was to cement and consolidate the rising Church of God, and to deter and exclude those worldly

minded pretenders to sanctity, whose accession would have injured its strength and character. Great fear, says the historian, came upon all the Church, and upon as many as heard these things. And of the rest, durst no man join himself to them; but the people magnified them, and believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.* This expression seems to imply, that the judgment of Ananias and Sapphira impressed the minds of all who heard of it, with such awe and reverence towards the Apostles, that as they stood teaching in Solomon's porch, no man durst join himself to them, as one of their own company; but the people magnified them, that is, reverently esteemed and honoured them; while a conviction of their divine authority converted multitudes to the true faith.

In the same chapter we have another proof, that the plainest and most striking evidences of truth are lost upon those, whose hearts are occupied by prejudice and worldly-mindedness. When the Apostles were miraculously liberated from prison, and brought a second time before the council, they were again rebuked as deceivers; and again did they make that declaration, *Acts v. 11, 13, 14.