house of Israel,' priests, rulers, and all the people, to acknowledge
his Master. He proclaims his supreme dignity and Messiahship. He is
the 'Lord' of whom the Psalmist sang, and the prophet declared that
whoever called on His name should be saved; and He is the Christ for
whom Israel looked.

Last of all, he sets in sharp contrast what God had done with Jesus,
and what Israel had done, and the barb of his arrow lies in the last
words, 'whom ye crucified.' And this bold champion of Jesus, this
undaunted arraigner of a nation's crimes, was the man who, a few
weeks before, had quailed before a maid-servant's saucy tongue! What
made the change? Will anything but the Resurrection and Pentecost
account for the psychological transformation effected in him and the
other Apostles?

II. No wonder that 'they were pricked in their heart'! Such a thrust
must have gone deep, even where the armour of prejudice was thick.
The scene they had witnessed, and the fiery words of explanation,
taken together, produced incipient conviction, and the conviction
produced alarm. How surely does the first glimpse of Jesus as Christ
and Lord set conscience to work! The question, 'What shall we do?' is
the beginning of conversion. The acknowledgment of Jesus which does
not lead to it is shallow and worthless. The most orthodox accepter,
so far as intellect goes, of the gospel, who has not been driven by
it to ask his own duty in regard to it, and what he is to do to
receive its benefits, and to escape from his sins, has not accepted
it at all.

Peter's answer lays down two conditions: repentance and baptism. The
former is often taken in too narrow a sense as meaning sorrow for