THE FAMILY ALTAR

June 11.

"And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to

another, What meaneth this?" Acts 2:12.

Many of the people who heard the disciples speaking in other

tongues did not know what to make of it, and asked: What

meaneth this ? They were informed soon afterwards by the Apostle

Peter in his inspiring sermon. Since then every person can and

ought to know what the Pentecostal miracle means for him and

all mankind. But there are still so many who do not know it.

Some think that on Pentecost the apostles received only the miracu-

lous gift to preach the Gospel in foreign languages and to heal

the sick. Now that the apostles and their miraculous gifts have

passed away, they imagine Pentecost has little meaning for us

later Christians. These wonderful gifts, however, were only the

external vessel in which the apostles received the true Pentecostal

gift, the gift of the Holy Ghost, who still abides with the Church

in the blessed Gospel of Christ. But the greatest mistake so

many people make about Pentecost is this, that they maintain that

the apostles only preached a more refined moral law than Moses

and the prophets had proclaimed in Old Testament times. They

see in Christianity and the Gospel of Christ a sort of religion

whose summary is the universal fatherhood of God and brother-

hood of man and which makes the Golden Eule — the love of

your neighbor — the true ladder to heaven. How terrible I By this

false doctrine they abolish the heaven-wide difference between the

Old Testament age with its bondage under the Law and the blessed

New Testament times with their glorious liberty in Christ. With

His precious blood our dear Lord Jesus Christ has forever freed

us from the curse and the bondage of Moses' Law, and Pentecost

ushered in that new covenant of pardon, and peace, and liberty

of which God Himself prophesied so often in the Old Testament,

for instance, in Jeremiah 31, 31 — 34.

Now do we pray God the Holy Ghost

For the true faith which we need the most,

And that He defend us when life is ending,

And from exile home we shall be wending.

Lord, have mercy!

Shine in our hearts, 0 most precious Light,

That we Jesus Christ may know aright,

Clinging to our Savior whose blood has bought us,

Who again to our true home has brought us.

Lord, have mercy!