This day is the feast of the Epiphany.  Epiphany, as many of you know, means ‘shewing,’ because on this day the Lord Jesus Christ was first shewn to the Gentiles; to the Gentile wise men who, as you heard in the Gospel, saw his star in the east, and came to worship him.  And the part of Scripture from which I have taken my text, is used for the Epistle this day, because in it St. Paul explains to us the meaning of the Epiphany.  The meaning of those wise men being shewn our Lord, and worshipping him, though they were not Jews as he was, but Gentiles.  He says that it means this, that the Gentiles were fellow-heirs with the Jews, and of the same body as them, and partakers of God’s promise in Christ by the Gospel.

This does not seem so very wonderful to us; and why?  Because we, though we are Gentiles like those wise men, have lived so long, we and our forefathers before us, in the light of the Gospel, that we are inclined to take it as a matter of course; forgetting what a wonderful, unspeakable, condescension it was of God, not to spare his only begotten Son, but freely to give him for us.  God forgive us!  We are so heaped with blessings that we neglect them, forget them, take them as our right, instead of remembering our sins and ungratefulness, and saying, Thy mercies are new every morning; it is only of thy mercies that we are not consumed.

But to St. Paul it was very wonderful news.  A mystery, as he said; quite a new and astonishing thought, that heathens had any share in God’s love and Christ’s salvation.

And so it was to St. Peter.  God had to teach it him by that wonderful vision, in which he saw coming down from heaven all sorts of animals, and God bade him kill and eat; and when he refused, because they were common and unclean, God forbade him to call anything common or unclean, now that God had cleansed all things by the precious blood of his dear Son.  Then Peter was bidden to go to the Gentile Roman soldier Cornelius.  And he went, though, he said, he had been used to think it unlawful for a Jew even to eat with a Gentile.  And when he went, he found, to his astonishment, that God’s love was over that Gentile soldier and his family, because they were good men, as far as they had light and knowledge, just as much as if they had been good Jews.  And God gave St. Peter a sign which there was no mistaking, that he really did care for those Gentile Romans, just as much as if they had been Jews; for, as he was preaching Christ to them, the Holy Ghost fell on them, not after, but before they were baptised.  So that St. Peter, astonished as he was, was forced by his own conscience and reason to say, ’Can any man forbid water, that these should not be baptised, who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we’ (Jews)?  Then he commanded them to be baptised in the name of the Lord.

And what was the lesson which God taught St. Peter by this?  St. Peter himself tells us; for he opened his mouth and said, ’Of a truth I see that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted by him.’