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SECTION VII.

ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

This book forms the last of the historical books of the New Testament, and is generally placed as a connecting link between the Gospels and the Epistles; though in several MSS. and versions, it stands at the end of St. Paul's epistles.

This interesting and important record of the early history of the Christian church has had several titles. Ecumenius aptly termed it "The Gospel of the Holy Spirit;" and Chrysostom as happily called it" The Book, the Demonstration of the Resurrection." These titles are much more descriptive of its contents, than the one which is now generally given to it.

That the evangelist Luke was the author of this book, is affirmed by the voice of antiquity, and is also demonstrated from its introduction, in which it is dedicated to the same person for whose immediate instruction his Gospel had been written, and which is here expressly referred to.

The long attendance of Luke on St. Paul, as well as the circumstance of himself having been an eye-witness of many of the occurrences which he records, renders him a most respectable and credible historian. His medical knowledge enabled him both to form a proper judgment of the miraculous cures which were performed by St. Paul, and to give an accurate and authentic detail of them. But he himself does not appear to have possessed the power of healing by supernatural means; at least, we have no instances of it on record: and when the father of Publius and other sick persons were suddenly cured, they were restored to health, not by Luke, but by the prayers of St. Paul.* This, as Dr. Clarke remarks, is another proof of the wisdom of God: had the physician been employed to work miracles of healing, the excellence of the power would have been attributed to the skill of man, and not to the power of his Maker.

Although the time at which this book was written is not expressly related, it may with some certainty be inferred from its contents. The last chapter brings down the history to the second year of St. Paul's imprisonment, and therefore could not have been written before the year 63; and as it relates no further particulars relative to this Apostle, whose history it chiefly regards in its latter part, the inference that it was written at this time is perfectly reasonable.

* Michaelis, Vol. iii. part 1, p. 327.

That St. Luke did not design to write a general history of the Christian church, during the first thirty years after Christ's ascension, is sufficiently evident from the omissions in his work. Hence, he passes by all the transactions in the church of Jerusalem, after the conversion of St. Paul, though the other Apostles continued for some time in Palestine. He also omits to notice the propagation of Christianity in Egypt, or in the countries bordering on the Euphrates and the Tigris; Paul's journey into Arabia; the state of Christianity in Babylon (1 Pet. v. 13); the foundation of the church at Rome, which had already received an epistle from St. Paul; several of St. Paul's voyages, and many other matters, of which he could not possibly be ignorant, as may be seen in Lardner.* Upon similar grounds we may conclude, that this book was not designed to be a full history of the ministry and sufferings of all the Apostles, in the propagation of Christianity; nor even to give a minute relation of the laborious exertions of the apostle Paul. Nor can it excite surprise, that the minute detail which was not adopted in the narrative of the ministry of Jesus, should not have been employed in a history of the acts of the Apostles. Rather, indeed, was it to be expected that Luke, who had followed this method of selection, in the first of his two works addressed to Theophilus, should continue the same plan in the last. To this book of the Acts, therefore, may be applied the words, in which John has spoken of his Gospel," and many other extraordinary occurrences indeed there were-which are not written in this book." Here, therefore, as in the Gospels, a selection of facts not regularly disposed in chronological order, was designed to serve for the evidence or illustration of certain important religious truths.

The two great points to which the selection of facts in this book seems subservient, are, that the Christian religion is of Divine origin, and that it was intended for the benefit, not of the Jewish nation alone, but of every nation on earth. As peculiarly striking examples of this, reference may be made to the passages, where are severally related, the descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles at the day of Pentecost; the vision of Peter, and the conversion of Paul (ch. ii. 1-36; x. 9-44; ix. 1-20); in which, while the miracles are fitted to prove the truths of the religion, in the cause of which they took place, the end or purpose of the miracles proclaims or prepares for its general propagation. On this supposition, there is a sufficient reason why the names of some of the Apostles never occur throughout the book, and why so little

* Supplement, vol. i. ch. viii. sect. 9.

is said of Peter and John; as it did not thus matter, that the labours of this or that Apostle should be preserved, or that even a distinct history of the first propagation of Christianity should be composed. On any other supposition it would be difficult to explain, why the work has not materials from which we might have learnt what befel all the Apostles in the execution of the trust committed to them, and traced more minutely the progressive diffusion of the Gospel; both of which objects are deeply interesting to Christians; and one of which, we are, by the title, early but perhaps injudiciously prefixed to the book, almost led to expect.*

In addition to the external evidences of the authenticity of this book, derived from the early and unbroken tradition of the Christian church, the most indubitable evidences of its truth may be deduced from its style and composition. The language and manner of every speaker whose addresses it professes to give, are strikingly characteristic; and the same speaker is found to adapt his manner to the character of the audience he happens to address. The speeches of Stephen, Peter, Cornelius, James, Tertullus, and Paul, are all different, and such as might naturally be expected from the characters in question, and the circumstances by which they were surrounded at the time. The historical details, also, and especially the incidental circumstances, mentioned by St. Luke, so exactly correspond, and that evidently without any design on the part of the writer, with the accounts furnished in St. Paul's epistles, and in ancient historians, as to afford the most incontrovertible evidences of its truth, and the strongest demonstration of the Christian religion.‡

Although St. Luke has not annexed any dates to the transactions which he records, nor followed uninterruptedly the thread of the history; we may perceive more regularity and continuity in this work than in any of the Gospels. Indeed, in both his works, Luke has shewn most apparently the design of defining within what period of the history of the world the Gospel history is to be placed; for, by comparing some of his facts with the coincident facts in Roman history, he has enabled us with great accuracy to ascertain when the history in the New Testament begins and terminates. From these data Michaelis has attempted to settle the chronology of this book, dividing the history into five epochs.§ It will be evi

Cook's Inquiry, p. 219. See also Benson's Hist. of the first planting of Christianity, vol. i. p. 22, &c.

See Michaelis, vol. iii. part 1, p. 333, &c. See Paley's Horæ Paulinæ, throughout. § Introduction, vol. iii. part 1, p. 335, &c.

dent, however, from an inspection of his scheme and a careful perusal of the book itself, that the time occupied by the narrative cannot be so divided into distinct periods, within one or other of which, each of the facts may with certainty be placed.

The following division, which has been adopted by Bishop Percy, is, perhaps, the most just and useful.

Part I. The account of the first Pentecost after Christ's death, and of the events preceding it, contained in chap. i, ii. II. The acts at Jerusalem, and throughout Judea and Samaria, among the Christians of the circumcision, ch. iiiix. xii.

III. The acts in Cæsarea, and the receiving of the Gentiles, ch. x, xi.

IV. The first circuit of Barnabas and St. Paul, among the Gentiles, ch. xiii, xiv.

V. The embassy from Antioch and the first council at Jerusalem, wherein the Jews and Gentiles were admitted to an equality, ch. xv.

VI. The second circuit of St. Paul, ch. xvi-xix.

VII. St. Paul's first journey to Rome, ch. xix. 21-xxviii.* In the book of the Acts, we see how the church of Christ was formed and settled. The Apostles simply proclaim the truth of God relative to the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ; and God accompanies their testimony with the demonstration of his spirit. What was the consequence? Thousands acknowledge the truth, embrace Christianity, and openly profess it at the imminent risk of their lives. The change is not a change of merely one religious sentiment or mode of worship for another; but a change of tempers, passions, prospects, and moral conduct. All before was earthly, or animal, or devilish; or all these together: but now all is holy, spiritual, and divine--the heavenly influence becomes extended, and nations are born unto God. And how was all this brought about? Not by might nor power; nor by the sword; nor by secular authority; not through worldly motives and prospects; not by pious frauds and cunning craftiness; not by the force of persuasive eloquence: in a word, by nothing but the sole influence of truth itself, attested to the heart by the power of the Holy Ghost.+

The style of St. Luke, in this book, is pronounced by Michaelis to be much purer than that of most other books of the New Testament, especially in the speeches delivered by

*Key to the New Testament, p. 63.

+ Dr. A. Clarke, Preface to the Acts of the Apostles.

St. Paul, at Athens, and before the Roman governors, which contain passages superior to any thing even in the epistle to the Hebrews, though the language of this epistle is preferable in other respects to that of any other book in the New Testament. But the Acts of the Apostles are by no means free from Hebraisms: and even in the purest parts, which are the speeches of St. Paul, we still find the language of a native Jew. There is, in this book, the same complete absence of labour and pomp, of every art to magnify and exalt, as characterizes the Gospels:-there is a simplicity of design and diction which forcibly bespeaks the sincerity and fidelity of the writer, and makes the most powerful impression on the mind and heart.

SECTION VIII

OF THE EPISTLES OF ST. PAUL.

Whoever will be at the trouble of collecting together the scattered materials of the life and character of St. Paul, which are dispersed up and down in the Acts of the Apostles, and his own divinely inspired epistles, and then of steadily contemplating and following out the thread of his history and labours, will rise from the task with a conviction that he was the most able, as he was also the most extraordinary minister of the New Testament, raised up by the great Head of the Church. A most determined and implacable enemy to the cross of Christ, the ebullitions of whose wrath swept away in one common destruction men and women' -a bigoted and unrelenting persecutor, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, and making havock of the church," he was brought over from the ranks of the enemy, and became not only an able preacher of the faith which he had once destroyed, but its most steady and successful defender. The conversion of Paul to the faith of Christ was not the occasion of destroying any of those striking features in his character which distinguished him while engaged in the work of destruction. It only brought them under the influence of principles which rendered them instruments of the most extensive and lasting good. Possessing a determination of purpose which no obstacles could thwart a burning charity which no opposition could quench—and an ardent zeal which no suffering could subdue, he united these

* Michaelis' Introduction, vol. iii. part 1. p. 332.