A wider view of the state of the community as a whole closes the
chapter. It is the first of several landing-places, as it were, on
which Luke pauses to sum up an epoch. A reverent awe laid hold of the
popular mind, which was increased by the miraculous powers of the
Apostles. The Church will produce that impression on the world in
proportion as it is manifestly filled with the Spirit. Do we? The so-
called community of goods was not imposed by commandment, as is plain
from Peter's recognition of Ananias' right to do as he chose with his
property. The facts that Mark's mother, Mary, had a house of her own,
and that Barnabas, her relative, is specially signalised as having
sold his property, prove that it was not universal. It was an
irrepressible outcrop of the brotherly feeling that filled all
hearts. Christ has not come to lay down laws, but to give impulses.
Compelled communism is not the repetition of that oneness of sympathy
which effloresced in the bright flower of this common possession of
individual goods. But neither is the closed purse, closed because the
heart is shut, which puts to shame so much profession of brotherhood,
justified because the liberality of the primitive disciples was not
by constraint nor of obligation, but willing and spontaneous.

Verses 46 and 47 add an outline of the beautiful daily life of the
community, which was, like their liberality, the outcome of the
feeling of brotherhood, intensified by the sense of the gulf between
them and the crooked generation from which they had separated
themselves. Luke shows it on two sides. Though they had separated
from the nation, they clung to the Temple services, as they continued
to do till the end. They had not come to clear consciousness of all
that was involved in their discipleship, It was not God's will that
the new spirit should violently break with the old letter.