It was a critical moment to these judges, for scholarship, with much ado, was studying and analyzing ignorance. But the Peter of Pentecost was not to be dismayed. He knew that the service of Christ is not formal but practical, and that his conduct in curing a lame beggar was more important to God than the observing of a thousand man-made forms and ceremonies. He knew from his former experience that ignorance need have no fear of the scoffer’s sneer, or the scholar’s questioning, when once the heart has been fully consecrated to the service of God. With confidence they faced the inquirers saying, frankly: “The power is not ours. This miracle was performed through the power of Christ, which you, in your learning, threw aside, and which we, in the simplicity of our untutored hearts, have accepted as the gift of God.” The power of Pentecost was with the preacher again, and the judges were filled with fear and wonderment. Against their most earnest desires they liberated the men, wondering why they, as learned men, should be influenced by men of such untrained intellects. While Christianity has always waged warfare against ignorance in all forms, and has been the leader in founding schools and colleges, the fact remains that many of our greatest achievements have been wrought by untrained men. God often takes the weak things of this world to confound the mighty. When an unorganized and badly scattered people needed a wise ruler, God passed by the palace doors and over the seats of learning that, in the open fields, he might crown David, a shepherd lad. When Jerusalem was a ruined city, overgrown with weed and briar, God ignored commanding generals and ruling monarchs, to honor Nehemiah, whose conquering courage rebuilt the city. When mad with power and wild excesses of sin, a mighty nation needed restraint, God stepped over the royal houses as though they were playthings upon the nursery floor, and lifted Daniel, an exile, to become the condemning conscience for them who had slain their consciences, and to become a radiant hope for those who were enslaved and had lost all courage. When the time had fully come for the kingdom of Christ to be preached to the cultured and aristocratic, he chose these two men of the fisher-craft, who, though ignorant and unlearned, made the scholars and statesmen dumb with wonderment, while the crowned power of the age was humiliated, unable to cope successfully against the growing faith.