'delivered out of the mouth of the lion,' that by you 'the preaching
may be fully known.'

If not, how dreary is that future to you, 'all dim and cheerless,
like a rainy sea,' from which wild shapes may come up and devour you!
Love and friendship will pass, honour and strength will fail, life
will ebb away, and of all that once stretched before you, nothing
will be left but one little strip of sand, fast jellying with the
tide beneath your feet, and before you a wild unlighted ocean!



THE APOSTOLIC WITNESSES

'Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the
time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us ... must one
be ordained to be a witness with us of His resurrection.'
--ACTS i. 21, 22.

The fact of Christ's Resurrection was the staple of the first
Christian sermon recorded in this Book of the Acts of the Apostles.
They did not deal so much in doctrine; they did not dwell very
distinctly upon what we call, and rightly call, the atoning death of
Christ; out they proclaimed what they had seen with their eyes--that
He died and rose again.

And not only was the main subject of their teaching the Resurrection,
but it was the Resurrection in one of its aspects and for one
specific purpose. There are, speaking roughly, three main connections
in which the fact of Christ's rising from the dead is viewed in