We Must Preach to the Consciences of Men
L. A. Banks. Acts 2:37-42 Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brothers… Inspector Byrnes of New York says, "The great lieutenant of every police officer is that mysterious thing called conscience. You let a man try to deceive himself and lie to himself about himself, and that something comes knocking up against the shell of his body, and thumping on his ribs with every heart-beat, and pounding on his skull until his head aches and he wishes he were dead, and groans in agony for relief. It is the same conscience that makes a criminal 'give himself away,' if one only knows how to awaken it, or stir it into activity. I never let a man know for what he is arrested. He may have committed a dozen more crimes of which I know nothing. If I lock him up alone and leave him to the black walls and his guilty conscience for three or four hours, while he pictures the possible punishment due to him for all his crimes, he comes presently into my hands like soft clay in the hands of the potter. Then he is likely to tell me much more than I ever suspected." So the conscience is the great lieutenant of every preacher of the gospel, and this is not a lesson for the pulpit alone, for one of the most suggestive features of the Pentecost revival is that the Church members were all preachers that day. This picture ought to lead us to have courage to expect immediate results from the faithful preaching of the gospel. One of the most dangerous errors that ever was propagated by the enemy of souls, an error that paralyses the tongue of the preacher and the prayer of the Church, is that Christianity is only a system of culture, and that souls are to be ransomed by gradual stages. (L. A. Banks.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? WEB: Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"