Now, I need not notice by more than a word in passing, what a
testimony it is to the impression that that meek and gracious
Sufferer had made upon His judges, that when they saw these two men
standing there unfaltering, they began to remember how that other
Prisoner had stood. And perhaps some of them began to think that they
had made a mistake in that last trial. It is a testimony to the
impression that Christ had made that the strange demeanour of His two
servants recalled the Master to the mind of the judges.

I. The first thing that strikes us here is the companionship that
transforms.

The rulers were partly right, and they were partly wrong. The source
from which these men had drawn their boldness was their being with
Christ; but it was not such companionship with Christ, as Annas and
Caiaphas had in view, that had given them courage. For as long as the
Apostles had His personal presence with them, there was no
perceptible transforming or elevating process going on in them; and
it was not until after they had lost that corporeal presence that
there came upon them the change which even the prejudiced eyes of
these judges could not help seeing.

The writer of Acts gives a truer explanation with which we may fill
out the incomplete explanation of the rulers, when he says, 'Then
Peter, _filled with the Holy Ghost_, said unto them.' Ah, that is it!
They had been with Jesus all the days that He went in and out amongst
them. They had companioned with Him, and they had gained but little
from it. But when He went away, and they were relegated to the same
kind of companionship with Him that you and I have or may have, then
a change began to take place on them. And so the companionship that