III. The account of the planting and spread of the Christian church. It records the names of the apostles, the number of the original company at Jerusalem, and the beginning of the church there. It shows that the life of Jesus was appealed to among those who had witnessed•it; that his messiahship was defended in the hearing of those who had crucified him for asserting it; that the divine appointment of his death was proclaimed in the midst of those who had inflicted it as a malefactor's doom; that his resurrection was affirmed in the face of those who had buried him and exercised official guardianship over his grave; that the first adherents to his religion were gained among the crucifiers themselves, including priests as well as the people; that the faith in him spread immediately amono. Jews and proselytes, then in Jerusalem, who belonged to the chief countries of the Roman empire, and to some beyond its bounds; and that, the Gentiles being speedily admitted by divine command to the full blessings of salvation, the church was rapidly extended into Judea, Samaria, Phenice, Cyprus, Syria, Asia 31inor, Illyria, and Italy.
IV. Conclusive evidence of the divine origin of Christianity. It shows that, advancing from a very small beginning, by the instrumentality of unarmed men, opposed by the power of the Roman empire; of private persons, opposed by the authority of the Jewish and pagan priesthoods; of unlettered men, opposed by all the culture of the times. it prevailed over the mightiest institutions, the most formidable barriers, the most malig nant persecutions, and prevailed by the power of God. When the historian Gibbon was investigating the decline and fall of the Roman empire he found that "an inquiry into the progress and establishment of Christianity constituted an essential part of the history of the Roman empire." "While that great body," he says, "Nfas invaded by open violence or undermined by slow decay, a pure and humble religion gently insinu ated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obsetirity, derived new vigor from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the cross on the ruins of the capitol." His curiosity having been awakened "to inquire by what means the Christian faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions of the earth," he ventures to give what he calls five secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church. All these are vital portions of Christianity, and, as stated by him, they are seen to amount to this, that it was the prevalence of Christianity that promoted the triumph of Christianity, as a great conflagration is promoted by the spreading of the flames. The book of A. supplies the necessary beginning to Gibbon's account by showing how the fire was kindled, how the essential elements of Christianity were produced. Ills causes are: I. "The zeal of the and the A. informs us how the Christians came into existence and how their zeal was first produced and then "purified." 2. "The doctrine of a future life;" and the A. declares the source whence
the doctrine was obtained and " improved. ' 3. " The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church;" and the A. explains how the primitive church began, and on what evidence the miraculous powers were so ascribed to it as to secure its triumph. 4. " The pure and austere morals of the Christians;" and the A. reveals how their morals camo to be pure and austere, in the midst of an abounding corruption too horrible to be looked upon, and nowhere more fully revealed than in Gibbon's own work. 5. "The union and discipline of the Christian republic;" and the A. demonstrates how the church came to he "a republic in the midst of the (empire," in what its "union" consisted, how its "discipline" was maintained, and by what power "it became an independent and inproncincr C trate " 83 Acts of the Apostles.
Actuary.
V. The close of Scripture history in relation to the fetes. In the great interest awakened by the book as recording the first preaching to the Gentiles, comparatively little notice is taken of the fact that it records also the last preaching to the Jews. The book opens with the preaching of the gospel to the Jews. the acceptance of it by some of them, and the bitter opposition made to it by the rest which at length drove away a large part of the Christians from Jerusalem and in a great degree brought the preaching to the Jews there to an end. When Paul came there after his conversion he began topreach zealously to the Jews, but they would not receive his word, and lie was commanded by the Lord to leave the city. At Antioch, in Pisidia, he preached earnestly to .Jews and Gentiles, but when the former contradicted and blasphemed lie turned, by divine command, to the latter. A similar result was witnessed in Iconium, Lystra, Thessa lonica, Berea, Corinth, and Ephesus. When, late in life, he went again to Jerusalem, as it proved for the last time, the opposition of the Jews was more furious than before, and after a narrow escape from death at their hands and an imprisonment, continuing more than two years, through their instrumentality, he was constrained to appeal unto Caesar. Three days after his arrival at Rome he sent for the resident Jews, and had a day appointed for making known the gospel to them, on which, from morning to evening, he expounded; testified, and persuaded concerning Jesus out of the law and the prophets. The result then was that some believed and others believed not; and again Paul turned to the Gentiles. With this narrative the A. ends, abruptly, as many say, with respect to Paul and the gospel, but with respect to the Jews. If no reason can be shown why Christian history should here be cut short, certainly it was necessary that Jewish history should here come to an end. For, in a little while after Paul's imprisonment at Rome, Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews were scattered abroad. And thus the A. completes the unity of the historical books of scripture whose constant and ultimate, though not always direct, reference is to the Jews.