The Superintending Providence of God 15 to the goodly fellowship of the prophets, and the perpetual procession of the noble army of martyrs. Surely all this is the standing proof of the Superintending Providence of God. He who gave the marching orders gave at the same time the promise of His perpetual presence on the march; and He has kept His word: “Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the age.” At every step faith has seen the Invisible Captain of the Lord’s host, and, in all victories, behind the sword of Gideon, the sword of the Lord. GOD IN ALL In the Acts of the Apostles, within the compass of twenty verses, fifteen times God is put boldly forward as the one Actor in all events. Paul and Barnabas rehearsed, in the ears of the church at Antioch and afterward at Jerusalem, not what they had done for the Lord, but all that He had done with them, and how He had opened the door of faith unto the Gentiles; what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them. And, in the same spirit, Peter, before the council, emphasizes how God had made His choice of him as the very mouth whereby the Gentiles should hear the word of the Gospel and believe; how He had given them the Holy Ghost and put no difference between Jew and Gentile, purify- ing their hearts by faith; and how He who knew all hearts had thus borne them witness.- Then James, in the same strain, refers to the way in which God had visited the Gen- tiles to take out of them a people for His name; and con- cludes by two quotations from the Old Testament which fitly sum up the whole matter: “The Lord who doeth all these things.” “Known unto God are all his works from the be- ginning of the world.” (Acts 14:27 to 15:18.) The meaning of such repeated phraseology cannot be mis- taken. God is thus presented as the one Agent or Actor, even conspicuous apostles, like Paul and Peter, being only His in- struments. No equal number of verses in the Word of God
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