The secret was further disclosed to Peter, when he was taught at the house of Cornelius “not to call any man common or unclean.” He saw, and the Church of Jerusalem saw and confessed that God “gave the like gift” to uncircumcised Gentiles as to themselves and had “purified their hearts by faith.” Many prophetic voices, unrecorded, confirmed this revelation. Of all this Paul is thinking here. It is to his predecessors in the knowledge of the truth rather than to himself that he refers when he speaks of “holy apostles and prophets” in verse 5. His readers would naturally turn to them in coming to this plural expression. The original apostles of Jesus and witnesses of His truth first attested the doctrine of universal grace; and that they did so was a fact of vital importance to Paul and the Gentile Church. The significance of this fact is shown by the stress which is laid upon it and the prominence given to it in the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles. The apostle frequently alludes to revelations made to himself; he never claims that this chief matter was _revealed_ personally to himself. It was an open secret when Saul entered the Church. “Whereof,” he says, in verse 7, “I _became minister_”; again, “to me was this grace given, to _preach to the Gentiles_ Christ’s unsearchable riches.” The leaders of the Jewish Christian Church knew well that their message was meant for all the world. But the abstract knowledge of a truth is one thing; the practical power to realize it is another. Until the new apostle came upon the field, there was no man ready for this great task and equal to it. It was at this crisis that Paul was raised up. Then “it pleased God to reveal His Son” in him, that he might “preach Him among the Gentiles.” The effect of this summons upon Paul himself was overwhelming, and continued to be so till the end of life. The immense favour humbles him to the dust. He strains language, heaping comparative upon superlative, to describe his astonishment as the import of his mission unfolds itself: “To me, less than the least of all the saints, was this grace given.” That Saul the Pharisee and the persecutor, the most unworthy and most unlikely of men, should be the chosen vessel to bear Christ’s riches to the Gentile world, how shall he sufficiently give thanks for this! how express his wonder at the unfathomable wisdom and goodness that the choice displays in the mind of God! But we can see well that this choice was precisely the fittest. A Hebrew of the Hebrews, steeped in Jewish traditions and glorying in his sacred ancestry, none knew better than the apostle Paul how rich were the treasures stored in the house of Abraham that he had to make over to the Gentiles. A true son of that house, he was the fittest to lead in the aliens, to show them its precious things and make them at home within its walls.