ACTS xxvi. 19. “Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not dis-
obedient unto the heavenly vision.”

THESE words are truly noble and triumphant. St. Paul is
looking back and remembering the brightest point of all
his life, in which his life not only took a new departure,
but began to move in a different direction and became
verily a new life. Everything a man does that is worth
the doing comes to him in the first place in some kind of
vision. As we look back on our lives we can all see that
visions have been shown us, and the difference between
men in this world, more than in anything else, is not in
the visions God has given them, but in the way they are
obedient or disobedient to them.
I. The vision of the Christian life is Christ the Master.
St. Paul, when the heavens opened on the way from
Jerusalem to Damascus, had a vision of the crucified and
risen Jesus; when he recognised the vision he became
obedient to it. The personal obedience is the Christian
life—the personal submission to One who has shown how
worthy He is of our obedience. The Christian recognises
the life of Jesus Christ as the pattern of the life into which
he is to be shaped by his continual obedience to Him.
II. It is not an unnatural thing to become a Christian.
The rescuing a soul and bringing it to Christ is simply
bringing it back into a life to which it naturally belongs,
and out of which it had wandered. The Saviour’s teaching
is that man belongs to God, and that the coming to God
is the coming back to God from whom we have departed.
The children of God have wandered from Him, but are
His children still.
III. The Christian progress. It is to be obedient to
every heavenly vision. Obedience sets the seal upon a
revelation given us by the Master, and then upon that
sealed revelation some new light shall come, which a new
obedience shall seal. So, every obedience new light, and
every light new obedience, as if they were the stairways
which led up to heaven and the soul goes on till it is made
perfect in Christ’s image. This Christian life is the glory
of all life, for no man is a man till he is Christ’s. It is
only he that has at last the other vision of the golden
streets and the river of the water of life.
Phillips Brooks