The Voices of Great Crowds.
A crowd is more than a gathering of individual minds, feelings, hopes. It is itself an individual, possessed for the time by a spirit of its own. It may be powerful for good or strong for evil. It is often the representative of one single undivided passion, and as it may be lifted above thoughts of self by enthusiasm for a great cause, so it may be the blind and violent expression of self-interest.
I. As we are constituted we must lead two lives, an individual life and an aggregate. "To his own master each man must stand or fall." This is the assertion of the necessity of our individual life. "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together"; here of our social life. There is a power, hard to define, but appreciable by all who have tried it, in union of minds and feelings for a common object. On such union depends the outcome of sympathy, of enthusiasm, of those mysterious powers which have such effect on our moral and intellectual nature. Great movements must be urged by the energy, the impulse, which comes of human spirits acting in union.
II. But, as we must act and move in union, we must think and judge as individuals. We must act in crowds; but we must stand think alone. We may not merge our individuality in any crowd, however respectable. We must try, however hard the task, to think alone and withstand the pressure of the crowd, for crowds are of all classes of society, of all professions, of all parties. The crowd at Ephesus repeats itself in many ways. There is always selfishness, prejudice, ignorance, suspicion, fear of doing right lest evil should come of it, in every crowd; because all are men of like affections, organs, passions, and temptations. We are all members of a crowd a crowd of our own and are therefore liable to have our perception of truth affected by selfish fears and hopes, not flowing from the pure desire to see "reason and the will of God" prevail. We must labour to separate ourselves from the crowd of those who shout with us, and try our principles by other standards. Like ships about to proceed on a long voyage, we need to withdraw for a time from the attractions of a crowded harbour, and correct our compasses before setting sail.
A. Ainger, Sermons,p. 142.
References: Acts 20:7. G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 254; Acts 20:9. J. Thain Davidson, Forewarned Forearmed,p. 93.Acts 20:19. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. vii., No. 365.Acts 20:21. J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons,p. 113; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. x., p. 300. Acts 20:22. J. M. Neale, Sermons for the Christian Year,vol. i., p. 71.Acts 20:22-24. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 563.