A very good evidence of the genuineness of the conversion of the disciples was their painstaking care to follow out minutely the directions of their ascended Lord.  He had prayed for their sanctification; they desired it.  He had spoken of a coming Comforter, and they eagerly awaited His advent.  He had said, “Tarry in Jerusalem until” His arrival, and they conscientiously met in an “upper room” for a ten-day prayer-meeting.  “Farewell! friends; farewell! memory-haunted synagogues; farewell! sacred temple; farewell! long-bearded priests; farewell all! we must go to prayer:  our Lord said that we should be sanctified.”  And thus in long line the one hundred and twenty file up the stairs to the Chamber of Blessing.  There is no lightness, no jesting, no quibbling, no bickering; all are serious, terribly in earnest, intent on “the promise of the Father.”  There is Peter, impulsive and eager, whole-hearted and enthusiastic; there is the meek and quiet Mary, who sat at Jesus’ feet at the old home in Bethany; there is the child-like saint, the devout and spiritual John; there is the repentant woman of Magdala; and there are many others who betake themselves to that sacred place—­“the upper room.”  One all-engrossing thought fills their minds.  “The promise of the Father which ye have heard of me.  The promise of the Father!  The promise of the Father!  O, when will He come?  We would know more about our departed Lord.  He is gone from us.  Our hearts are torn and bleeding and lonely.  Jesus said, ‘He shall testify of me.’  Would that He would come now!”

Why only the few?

But why are there only one hundred and twenty?  Was it not into Jerusalem that Christ entered riding over a cloak-carpeted way amid the deafening shouts of “Hosanna”?  Did He not teach and instruct and heal hundreds, if not thousands, in and about Jerusalem?  Was He not lionized at times by an admiring public?  Yea, truly; but one may admire Christ and yet not love Him.  There are many who at some “hard saying” refuse to walk with Him.  Thousands who have a keen appreciation of “loaves and fishes” shrink from “leaving all” and following Jesus.  A great concourse is drawn and held spell-bound by a naive, graceful, eloquent, artless preacher who uses “lilies,” and the “grass of the field,” and the “sower” of seed, and the “sparrow” in the air to enforce his truth.  But one may be interested, and yet not be saved.

The aesthetic element.

In some people religion appeals to the aesthetic nature, and to that only.  They festoon the cross with flowers, but never think of dying on it.  They are charmed by Gothic churches filled with “dim, religious light.”  The waves of music from the great; sounding organ awe their souls and fill them with a pensiveness which they mistake for repentance.  Pointed arches, sculptured capitals, fretted altars, swinging censers, burning candles, white-robed choir-boys,