Acts 17:27

Acts 17:27

The Voice of History.

I. History is the preacher of God. We may learn from it just the refutation of the fool when he hath said in his heart "There is no God." The blind man might as well assert that there is no sun. All history, all Scripture, all nature, all experience, refutes him. Well might the baffled and dying Julian exclaim, "O Galilean, thou hast conquered!" Could there be two more stupendous proofs of the presence of God in history than Christianity and Christendom? What can account for so superb a triumph of the merest weakness? One fact, and one fact only the power of Christ's resurrection.

II. And history, which is the preacher of God, is also a preacher of judgment. How often has God confounded the Babels and dashed in pieces the invincible despotisms of the world! God is not, as Napoleon said, on the side of the biggest battalions. Alexander, the Czar of Russia, understood the truth if Napoleon did not, and on his commemorative medal were carved the words, "Not to me, not to us, but unto Thy name."

III. History is the preacher of great moral verities. A nation morally corrupt is invariably a nation physically weak. History is a voice ever sounding across the centuries the eternal distinctions of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word and unrighteous deed, for cruelty or oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid to the end. Justice and truth alone endure and live; injustice and falsehood may be long-lived, but doomsday comes to them at last.

F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxix., p. 353.

References: Acts 17:27. G. Gilfillan, Christian World Pulpit,vol. viii., p. 257; Homilist,2nd series, vol. i., p. 589; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ix., p. 84.