Acts 9:20

Acts 9:20

I. Promptitude is a pre-requisite and essential element of success. A beginning is only a beginning, and yet much depends on how it is made. Some beginnings are like the spring on the mountain side, gushing into life and flowing clearly. Some are like waters from a mossy soil, trickling, oozing, so little visible and so uncertain that you cannot tell where they begin. But here is a vigorous clear beginning; here is the saliency of a new life. That promptitude of Paul's saved him from many difficulties which else would have beset his course. It raised his conversion above suspicion. It opened his way. It conformed his faith. It made retreat more difficult. It made him a fit example for all who are beginning the Christian course to the end of time.

II. If the principle is true, it is applicable all down the scale; not to great men only, but to every man. "Straightway" do what thy hand findeth to do. (1) Straightway. And your new consciousness will become bright and clear, as it never will do by abstinence and repression. Doubts gather round the inactive mind, over the slumbering, reluctant will, as mists and exhalations over the stagnant pool. Work in spite of them; work through them on to duty, they are gone or only linger, thin and luminous, like vapours that are vanishing away. (2) Straightway. And the outer difficulties, which gather like the inner doubts, will, like them, be dispersed, and you will see them no more; or better still, seeing them, you will not fear or regard them, but go on your unswerving way. (3) You will give to your soul one of the first and most indispensable conditions of growth. (4) You will lay the first stones in the great edifice of habit. This is the true tower with the heaven-reaching top, the tower of a man's life; and on the very first stones of that tower you will see written the word "Straightway." (5) You will end no small part of what may be called the lesser miseries of life. (6) The enemies of our true life and of the gospel of Christ are taken at advantage, and timorous friends the discouraged, the weak, the halting receive as it were a new inspiration. Spiritual strength goes from one to another like electricity, and a soul in prompt action necessarily gives it out, charging other souls with the celestial fire till they too glow and burn with love to Christ.

A. Raleigh, From Dawn to the Perfect Day,p. 87.