Acts 24:14—After the Way which they call a sect, so serve I the God of our Fathers. (R.V.)
For want of a better term by which to set forth Christianity—whether by friend or foe is immaterial—the new principle which it represented was called the Way.
"Saul asked for letters to Damascus, that if he found any that were of the Way, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts 9:2, R.V.). At Ephesus some were "disobedient, speaking evil of the Way before the multitude" (Acts 19:9). "About that time there arose no small stir concerning the Way" (Acts 19:23). "Felix had more exact knowledge concerning the Way" (Acts 24:22). "I persecuted this Way unto the death" (Acts 22:4).
It is a beautiful and significant phrase. Christ is Himself the Way. He has opened the way to God. Through the heavens He passed in his ascension, leaving behind Him at every step a way by which we may travel till every one of us appears in Zion before God. In Christ we have found the way to the Father, and have learnt a rule of life. The word Methodist is closely akin to this. The followers of Wesley have been obeying on a new method which their illustrious founder opened.
"Men of the Way"; such is the designation by which Christians should be known. They are pilgrims and strangers, wayfarers, having no abiding city, but always passing on. We may say of them as the psalmist did of the pilgrim hosts that went up yearly to worship at the feast, "Blessed is the man whose strength is in Thee; in whose heart are the highways to Zion" (Psalms 84:5, R.V.). And is not this the Way that Isaiah spoke of when he said, "An highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called the way of holiness" (Isaiah 35:8-10)?