Acts 19:34

‘GREAT IS DIANA!’

‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians.’

Acts 19:34

The craftsmen are types of those who yield to feeling and cupidity what should only be yielded to reason and God. Demetrius appealed to the passions of the workmen, and they were at once on his side. They never reasoned about the things involved in St. Paul’s procedure at all. Their act, as is so often the case in such instances, was utterly irrational; and they yielded to interest and passion what should only have been given up to the highest qualities and exercises of manhood. They cried out, ‘Great is Diana of the Ephesians!’ They did not consider, and refused the supreme God and the supreme good for Diana and the wages of their craft.

What a folly and infatuation that men blindly yield themselves and their wills to false gods—to Diana instead of Christ!’

I. The counterparts of these men live to-day.—There is no abuse, however hoary, however injurious to the state or the Church, that does not rally some crowd of unreasoning, passion-led mortals for its defence.

(a) It is the world’s cry concerning all its false gods; concerning wealth and its tyranny; concerning fashion, concerning pleasure, concerning misgovernments and oppressions, concerning armies and their needless extravagance and bloodshed.

(b) It is the world’s cry concerning the immoral principles which are cursing and ruining it; concerning infidelity, concerning intemperance, concerning fleshly sin, concerning the wild whirl of excitement and gambling and horrible licentiousness into which it has plunged. The characteristic all these have in common is their unreason. Great are the false gods of the diseased imagination, and of the enslaved appetites and the false will!

II.—What led to this manifestation of human blindness and folly is the only thing which can cure them.—St. Paul’s preaching of Jesus is the only answer to the world’s infatuation. It says ‘Great is Diana,’ and we say, great is the Almighty Saviour, great is His cross, great is His salvation, great is His grace, great is His victory over the powers of darkness, great the blessedness of pure hearts in heaven.

We meet this folly with the Gospel of God’s grace.