YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

THE CREDIBILITY OF THE BOOK

OF

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

The Credibility

OF THE BOOK OF

The Acts of the Apostles
BEING
THE HULSEAN LECTURES FOR 1900-1901

FREDERIC HENRY CHASE, D.D.
PRESIDENT OF QUEENS* COLLEGE,
AND NORRISIAN PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY, CAMBRIDGE

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MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited
NEW YOKK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1902

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Yale Divinity Library
Nrw Hawn Cnnn.

TO
THE FELLOWS OF
QUEENS' COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
WITH GRATITUDE AND AFFECTION

PREFACE
The subject for the Hulsean Lectures 1900-
1901 was chosen under the conviction that the
credibility of the Book of the Acts of the
Apostles is second only in importance to the
credibility of the Gospels, and that the final
verdict must be based on a rigorous and
repeated examination of the main course of
the narrative and of the types of Apostolic
teaching which the Book professes to embody.
It is impossible in four lectures to deal with
so large a subject with anything like complete
ness or thoroughness. Even within the narrow
limits which I have marked out for myself,
much has been left unsaid. The character of
these lectures, for example, prevented me from
examining with any minuteness the language
of the Book. For some time I have been
working at the Acts in preparation for the
vii

viii HULSEAN LECTURES
volume on that Book in The International
Critical Commentary ; and I hope that, if I
am allowed to complete that volume, I may
in it have an opportunity for the fuller and
more detailed discussion of many points on
which I have been able in the following pages
only to touch. Meantime, I may be permitted
to say that the study which I have been able
to give to the Book confirms my belief that
in it we have a truthful and trustworthy history.
I am deeply conscious of the responsibility
which rests on any one who attempts to inter
pret the records of the Apostolic age. These
records from many points of view are of price
less value to the Church of to-day. But minute
and patient investigation is the only foundation
on which we can securely build the edifice of
spiritual instruction. Honesty, accuracy, and
reverence are the essential qualifications of the
Biblical critic. One who owes a debt which he
can never adequately acknowledge to the three
great teachers whom during the last half cen
tury God has given to Cambridge, the last of
whom has but lately ended his earthly work,
has had in these respects the highest ideal set

PREFACE ix
before him ; and he knows how far he falls
short of it.
The last of the four lectures was delivered
in St. Mary's Church at a time of profound
national sorrow. I have ventured to retain,
as a memorial of an historic Sunday, the words,
inadequate as they must appear, in which I
referred to her late Majesty, Queen Victoria.
At the close of the third lecture it was my
duty to speak of the late Bishop of London,
the sense of the greatness of whose loss to
the Church time does not diminish ; these few
paragraphs also I have printed.
The pleasant task remains of expressing my
sincere gratitude to the Rev. A. Wright, M.A.,
Vice-President of Queens' College, for much
valuable help ; to the Rev. R. H. Kennett,
M. A., Fellow of Queens' College, for answering
my questions as to certain Aramaic words ; to
Mr. A. B. Cook, M.A., late Fellow of Trinity
College, for some suggestions which he allows
me to embody in the notes on the fourth
lecture ; to the Rev. G. A. S. Schneider, M.A.,
of Gonville and Caius College ; and to Rev.
C. A. Phillips, M.A., of King's College, who

x HULSEAN LECTURES
with characteristic kindness have on this, as on
former occasions, helped me by their criticism
in the correction of the proofs. I need hardly
add that none of these friends is in any way
responsible for the opinions expressed in these
lectures, still less for any errors or inaccuracies
which may be found in them.
Cambridge,
Easter Eve, 1902

CONTENTS

LECTURE I
Introduction. The Day of Pentecost
Statement of subject 3. Intrinsic importance of the Book
of the Acts 3 f. Prominence of questions relating to it
of late years 4-8; (a) "Western" text 5 ft'., (/>) archteology
7 f. , (c) Quellenkritik 8, (rf) Christian doctrine and institu
tions 8.
Two views of the Book 8-14 — (a) largely legendary 9, (b) the
work of St. Luke, a substantially accurate history 9 ff. ;
four lines of evidence — (i.) reception in the Church 10 f.,
(ii.) St. Paul's Epistles n, (iii.) "we-sertions" 11 ff., (iv.)
traces of medical phraseology 1 3 f.
" Sources " of the Book 14-24; (a) theories of literary sources
not proven 1 5 f. , (b) evidence of Preface to St. Luke's Gospel
16 ff., (c) St. Luke and the actors in the history, St. Paul
19 f., Philip 20, Elders at Jerusalem 21, St. Mark 21 f.,
St. Peter 22 ff.
Standard of judgment 24 ff. ; relation of the Book to St.
Paul's Epistles 26 f. ; summary 27 f.
The " traditional " theory to be tested by examination of
the Book 28 f. ; plan and purpose of the Book 29 f.
I, The Day of Pentecost 30-44. 1. The Temple the scene

HULSEAN LECTURES
of the Pentecostal history 30 ff. 2. "Tongues like as of
fire" 33 ff. 3. The gift of tongues 35 ff. 4- Significance
of the Day of Pentecost 40 ff.

LECTURE II
PAGR
The Expansion of the Church 47
The Lord's command 47 ff. Stages of advance (Jerusalem
to Rome), 49 ff. Inclusion of Gentiles in the Church 53.
Does the history appear to be a fiction ? 53.
Jewish ideas as to " the nations " in Old Testament 54 f., in
later literature 55 f., the position of our Lord 56 ff. ; thus
the writer had no current expectation to guide invention —
fact or pure fiction 58 f. In earliest speeches scarcely a
reference to the Gentiles 59 f.
The history of the expansion 61-101. (1) The Church at
Jerusalem 61-65. No Apostolic policy of advance 61,
events connected with St. Stephen 6 1 f. ; effects inwardly
and outwardly 63 ff. (2) The Church of Palestine 65-74.
The work of Philip 65 ff, conversion of Saul of Tarsus —
different accounts 68 ff. (3) The Church of the world
75-IOT. (a) The breaking up of the Apostolic College
75 f-, St. Peter's mission to Cornelius 76 ff., his vision
78 f., the Pentecost of the Gentile world 79 f., its meaning
not recognised at Jerusalem 80, St. Peter's characteristic
work now ended 80 f. (i) The Syrian Antioch 81, the
Church there at first Jewish 81 ff., Saul of Tarsus 84, the
nickname Christian 84 ff. (c) The mission of Barnabas
and Saul 86, their work at Cyprus 86 f. , the decision to
evangelize the Gentiles 87 ff. (d) The position of the
Gentiles in the Church 90-101, the controversy 90 f., (1)
relation of the account in the Acts to that in the Epistle
to the Galatians 91 ff, (2) genuineness of Acts xv. 23 ff,
93 f>'-. (a) form 94 {., (/S) silences 95, (7) restrictive
clauses 95 ff, (e) St. Paul's subsequent work 98 ff.

CONTENTS

LECTURE III PAGE
The Witness of St. Peter .... 105
Different views as to the record of the speeches 106 ff., two
necessarily modifying influences, (a) the process of editing
108 ff, (6) the transmission of the report no ff., possible
use of shorthand reports III ff. , the preservation of other
speeches to which this theory is inapplicable 113 ff, the
original language of St. Peter's speeches probably Greek
114 ff. , their substance remembered because it was the '
turning-point of many lives and became the subject of after
instruction 117 ff. , possible influence of written narratives
119 f. , St. Luke's personal communication with St. Paul
and St. Peter 120 f.
The speeches of St. Peter 122-159, (I) Their Judaic setting
122 ff., their conception of the Work and Person of our
Lord 125 ff., the Messianic hope 125 ff, use of the language
of this hope in these speeches 129 ff, especially the titles
"the Holy and Righteous One" 132 ff, the "Servant"
135 ff. (2) The events of our Lord's life 141 ff, His
miracles 142 ff. ; His sufferings and death 144 ff., these
sufferings predestined 146 f., they involved absolute humi
liation 147 ff. ; His resurrection 150 ff., (a) evidences for
it 152 f., (i) inference as to the Lord's Person — the name
Lord 154 ff. ; conclusion 159.
The death of Dr. Creighton, late Bishop of London, 1 59 ff.

LECTURE IV
The Witness of St. Paul ... .167
The Acts and the Epistles present different aspects, of St.
Paul's work 168 f., witness of St. Paul in the Acts to be
investigated in relation to three questions 169 f., the selec
tion of speeches probably due to St. Paul 171 f.

iv HULSEAN LECTURES
I. St. Paul's witness to Israel 172-195. No Pauline Epistle
addressed to Jews 172 ff. (a) At Damascus 174 ff., "Jesus
is the Son of God," significance of the title 1 74 ff. (i) At
Antioch in Pisidia 178 ff. Two matters of form {a) " this
people Israel" 179 f., (I>) Pauline manner of quotation
180 ff. Comparison with St. Stephen's speech 182 f.
Three main points — (1) The Passion and the Resurrection,
comparison with Petrine speeches and Pauline Epistles
183 ff. (2) The Lord's Person — the Sonship in relation
to the Baptism and the Resurrection 187 ff. (3) Justifica
tion by faith 191 ff, Jewish literature (Apoc. Baruch,
2 Esdras) 192 f., quotation from Habakkuk 194 f.
2. St. Paul's witness to the pagan world 195-234. Choice
of two specimen speeches (Lystra, Athens) 195 f. — (i.) The
speech at Lystra 196-204. General scope of the speech
196 ff. St. Paul, silent as to the world of nature in the
Epistles, speaks here only as a student of Old Testament and
a prophet 19S f. , comparison of speech with the Epistles as
to (a) the general view of nature as beneficent 200 f, (/>) its
witness to God 201 ff. Nothing directly Christian in the
speech 203 f. (ii.) The speech at Athens 204-234. The
occasion 204 ff., the Areopagus (the hill, not the court)
207 ff., (a) the heathen world and its idolatry 210 ff.,
attitude of St. Paul towards idolatry in the Epistles and in
the speech 210 ff, the altar dyvui(TT(ii 6e$ 216 f., St. Paul's
view of God's attitude to " the nations " in the Epistles and
in the speech 217 ff. , (b) the doctrine of God 222 ff. , com
parison of St. Paul's teaching in the Epistles and in the
speech as to (i.) the unity of the race 222 ff.. (ii.) the unity
of history 224 f., (iii.) the unity of human life (the divine
immanence) 225 ff., (c) the divine call to repentance 229 ff.,
the Christian teaching in the speech slight and elementary
231 ff, incidental reference in I Cor. to St. Paul's sense of
failure at Athens 233 f.
3. St. Paul's pastoral speech at Miletus 234-28S. Character
of the speech 234 f. (1) The past 236 ff, appeal to the
Elders' remembrance of his sojourn at Ephesus 236 f.,
his life ("the plots of the Jews ") 237 ff, his work in public

CONTENTS XV
240 f., in private 241 ff. (2) The Apologia 243 ff,
evidence of the Epistles and of the speech 243 ff, nature
of the charges brought against St. Paul 246 f., (i.) undue
authority and greed (the Epistles and the speech) 247 ff,
(ii.) unfaithfulness to the truth (the Epistles and the speech)
253 ff. (3) St- Paul's forecast of the future 257 ff.— I. His
own fate 257 ff., (a) comparison of the Epistles and the
speech as to the journey to Jerusalem 257 ff, (b) explana
tion of apparent discrepancies as to (i.) the collection for
the church at Jerusalem 260 ff, (ii.) St. Paul's expected
martyrdom at Jerusalem 262 f. ; II. The dangers before
the Ephesian Church 265 ff. , (i.) dangers from without
(persecution) 265 ff., (ii.) dangers from within (false
teachers), comparison of the Epistles and the speech 267 ff.,
(3) the pastoral charge and commendation 271 ff. , com
parison of the Epistles and speech as to (a) the teacher's
need of self-discipline 271 ff. , (b) the divine source of the
ministry 273 ff. , (c) the character of the ministry (the
pastoral metaphor, the use of the term eiriaKOTros) 275 ff. ,
(d) the redeemed church 282 ff. The final commenda
tion 286 ff.
Review of the Pauline speeches 288-292.
Summary of the four lectures 292 ff. ; conclusion (the
" traditional " view of the book is seen to be the "critical ''
view) 296 ; the critic is prepared to consider the further
problems of the Book, (<r) historical e.g. the reference to
Theudas (v. 36 f.) 296 ff, (/') psychological and religious
(the supernatural element in the Book) 299 ff.
The death of her late Majesty, Queen Victoria, 302 ff.

Index ... . . 309

LECTURE I

Ahuii/ccoe Buncuiin eneXeoNToc toO ariou
nNeiiuaTOC £9' VU.OC.

23RD Sunday after Trinity,
November 18, 1900.

I

' ' Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come
upon you." — Acts i. 8.
I invite you in these lectures to a study of the
Book of the Acts of the Apostles. Avoiding,
as far as possible, the technical discussion of
points of detail, I wish first to follow the main
stream of the narrative, and then to review the
presentation of Apostolic teaching which we find
in the Book. No discussion of the first age of
the Church, when the new forces which Christ
brought into the world had fullest and freest
play, can for the devout student be fruitless in
spiritual lessons ; but the main object which I
set before myself is to ask, and to do what I
can towards answering, the question — How far
does the Book of the Acts bear a consistent
witness to its own veracity ?
A vast interval separates the day when the

4 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Lord's visible presence was withdrawn from the
disciples and that July some thirty-five years
later, when the Roman Emperor found a con
venient scapegoat for his own crime in the
"great multitude" of those among his subjects
at Rome whom the populace called Christians,
and whom they hated for their supposed abomina
tions. The Book of the Acts is the one docu
ment which professes to bridge the chasm.
Again, what a startling transition it is when
from the Apostles, sent forth by their Master
with no controversial equipment but their
conviction that the crucified Messiah had been
raised from the dead, we turn to the earliest of
St. Paul's Epistles, written to Gentile Churches,
and informed by a theology which, however
capable of expansion and enrichment, was
already clear and definite and comprehensive ?
The only clue which we have to guide us in
the attempt to trace the course of this doctrinal
evolution is supplied by the Book of the Acts.
This Book stands alone as an authority which
gives a coherent account of this period, a period
unique in the religious history of mankind.
And if this is the essential interest and im-

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 5
portance of the Book, there are special reasons
why of late years attention has been directed to it.
With Codex Bezae in the University Library
close at hand, we are not likely to forget that
the Acts is the field on which the battle of the
so-called " Western " text is being fought out.
Since Professor Blass, having won his laurels
in the field of classical scholarship, entered the
lists, this controversy has involved the central
problems of the genesis of the Book. Insisting
on the undoubted fact that " Western " readings
are extraordinarily numerous and striking in the
Lucan writings, Professor Blass infers that the
two types of text, the " Western " text and the
common text, represent two editions of the
Gospel and of the Acts, put forth by the author
himself. In what he accounts the earlier and
unabridged edition of the Book a reading occurs
— "when we had been gathered together"
(xi. 28) — which appears to introduce the writer
to us as a member of the Church at Antioch in
its earliest days, and which therefore, if genuine,
throws most valuable light on the writer's history
and therefore on the sources of his information.
It must suffice here and now with a peremptori-

6 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
ness almost impertinent to say that this theory,
so attractive as admitting us into the secrets of
St. Luke's literary methods, and accepted as it
has been by ,high authorities — by Dr. Salmon of
Dublin and (with some reservations) by Pro
fessor Zahn1 — fails to take into account some
of the essential conditions of the problem. It
isolates the textual phenomena of the two Lucan
Books, and it neglects the artificial character of at
least many of the"Western" readings. Yet those
who cannot accept Professor Blass's conclusions
may in the end find that he has earned their
gratitude for emphasizing the fact that it is in
the Gospel according to St. Luke and in the
Acts that " Western " readings are most con
spicuous. A prophecy as to the issue of a con
flict, which perhaps is still in its earlier stages,
may be rash. But I confess that I look forward
to wide and important conclusions emerging
from the tangled perplexities of the controversy.
While the two Lucan Books were still circulated
1 See Salmon, Appendix to a Historical Introduction, pp. 597 ff. ;
Some Criticism on the Text of the New Testament, pp. 136 ff. ; Zahn,
Einleitung in das N. T., ii. pp. 338 ff. Blass published his view first in
Theol. Studien u. Kritiken, 1894, pp. 86 ff, and later (in a somewhat
modified form) in Acta Apostolorum . . . secundum formam quae videtur
Iiomanam, 1896, pp. vii. f. ; Philology of the Gospels, pp. 96 ff.

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 7
together as the two parts of a single work —
such, I believe, is the inference which must be
drawn from the facts — their text was explained
and paraphrased and assimilated to passages of
the Old Testament and of the Apostolic writ
ings. And hence it follows that the "Western "
text is a proof that, before the Gospels were
formed into a separate collection, the Lucan
writings were regarded as belonging to the
Apostolic literature ; and further, that this litera
ture was already becoming co-ordinated with
the Old Testament.
On another side archaeology has dealt with
the Book. The spade of the excavator has
revealed the secrets of cities in Asia Minor
which were the scene of £t. Paul's activity.
The social and political life of the time, and of
the districts with which the Book is concerned,
stands out in clearer light than it ever did
before. The results of such investigations as
these (which lie outside our special subject) are
widely known in England through the vigorous
and prolific pen of Professor Ramsay. Caution
is doubtless needed, lest weapons of untempered
and untried steel should be rashly placed in the

8 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
armoury of the apologist. But it may be safely
said that the certain results of archaeological
research strongly confirm the accuracy and
truthfulness of the author of the Acts.
Again, during the last decade the minute
and laborious criticism of a series of German
scholars has occupied itself with the literary
analysis of the Book. Methods which had
been fertile of result elsewhere have been
pressed into the service here. The discovery
of the sources of the Acts became for a time the
favourite ambition of explorers in the region of
New Testament criticism.1
Lastly, historians of the Apostolic age and
students of Christian Doctrine and of Christian
Institutions have at the most important stage
of their work been brought face to face with the
question, how far the Book of the Acts can be
regarded as a trustworthy historical authority.
Now that the extreme position of the Tubin
gen school has been abandoned — according to
1 A convenient risumi of these theories will be found in Zbckler's
article Die Apostelgeschichte als Gegenstand hdherer und niederer
Kritik in Greifswalder Studien, pp. 109-129, or in Mr. A. C.
Headlam's article on the Acts in Hastings' Diet, of the Bible, i. p. 34.

i THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 9
which the Acts was a late controversial romance,
the only historical value of which was to throw
light on the thought of the period which pro
duced it — there are, to speak broadly, two
main views about the character of the Book
which deserve consideration.
On the one hand, it is maintained by scholars
who reject the Lucan authorship of the Acts,
that it was written early in the second century
or somewhat late in the first x ; that it incor
porates, especially in the history of St. Paul's
later missionary journeys, fragments of authentic
narrative ; but that, particularly in the earlier
chapters, it is an idealized recension of untrust
worthy traditions — at best "a genuine core," to
use a phrase of Jiilicher's {Einleitung, p. 355),
" overgrown with legendary accretions."
On the other hand, this last-named view is
confronted with the traditional account of the
Book, that it was written by St. Luke, a com
panion of St. Paul, and that it gives not an
absolutely perfect but a substantially accurate
history of the period which it covers. This
1 Harnack (Die Chronologie, pp. 246 ff. ) gives the probable limits of
date as 80-93 A-D'; Julicher (Einleitung, p. 344) as 100-105.

10 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
view, which I believe to be the true one, rests
on the pillars of four facts.
(i.) No sooner did a strictly theological
literature arise in the Church at the end of the
second and at the beginning of the third century
than the Book was referred to by the title familiar
to ourselves and as the work of St. Luke. This
is the case with the representatives of the great
Churches — with Irenaeus (iii. 13. 3, ed. Massuet),
who united in himself the traditions of South
Gaul, of Rome, and of Asia Minor, and who,
as the pupil of Polycarp, was the spiritual grand
son of St. John ; with the author of the Mura-
torian fragment, possibly Hippolytus, speaking
from Rome ; with Clement of Alexandria
[Strom, v. 12, p. 696 ed. Potter); with Tertul-
lian of Carthage {adv. Marc. v. 1, Dejejun. 10).
The obvious interpretation of this unanimity is
that the name of Luke was attached to the
Book from the first. If we do not accept this
conclusion, there are, I believe, two alternatives
between which we must make our choice. We
may suppose that by a somewhat elaborate
process of exclusion some early reader or some
early readers of the Book inferred that Luke

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS n
might be the author; that "might be the
author " passed into " was the author " ; and that
this view was universally accepted. Or we
may adopt the opinion which has lately found
favour with those who give up the Lucan
authorship of the whole Book, that the diary of
travel incorporated in the Acts was really the
work of Luke, and that the fact of some
fragments of his journal having been anony
mously imbedded in the history somehow
brought it about that the whole Book became
universally assigned to him. It is obvious that
both these theories are weighted with a heavy
burden of difficulties and improbabilities.
(ii.) We learn from St. Paul's Epistles to the
Colossians and to Philemon that " Luke, the
beloved physician," was with him at Rome
during his first captivity, and from the Second
Epistle to Timothy (if we accept that Epistle,
as I believe that we are justified in doing, as
authentic) that the same faithful friend was
at his side when " the time of his departure "
was "at hand."
(iii.) In three sections of the Acts (xvi. 10-17;
xx. 5-xxi. 18; xxvii. i-xxviii. 16) the writer uses

12 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
the first person plural. The natural inference
is that he himself shared in the experiences ,
which he relates in these sections, and was for
a time St. Paul's companion. This " we," thus
suddenly breaking in, must not be separated ;
from the "me" and the "I" of the opening
verses of the Gospel and of the Acts. In
striking contrast to the other Evangelists, the
author of the third Gospel and of the Acts at
the beginning of each of his two treatises
speaks in his own person, and thus prepares
his readers for those later parts of his work
in which he again speaks about himself. The
crucial question still remains, whether in vocabu
lary and in style these sections so resemble
the Gospel and the rest of the Acts as to
warrant the conclusion that they are not
insertions from some independent document.
The matter has once more been investigated
with singular care and minuteness by Sir John
Hawkins in his Horae Synopticae. The result
of his inquiry may be best given in his own
words (p. 154) : — " On the whole, then, there is
an immense balance of internal and linguistic
evidence in favour of the view that the original

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 13
writer of these sections was the same person as
the main author of the Acts and of the third
Gospel." Critics who deny this unity of author
ship have abstained, so far as I know, from
a close investigation as to the literary and
linguistic relation of these sections to the rest
of the Book and to the Lucan Gospel.
(iv.) St. Paul, as we saw, speaks of St. Luke
as "the beloved physician." Dr. Hobart
of Dublin, in his work on The Medical
Language of St. Luke, has endeavoured "to
show, from an examination of the language
employed in the third Gospel and the Acts of
the Apostles, that both are the works of a
person well acquainted with the language of the
Greek Medical Schools" (p. xxix.). Doubtless
the list of coincidences between the vocabulary
of the Lucan writings and that of medical
writers needs careful sifting. Words, for
example, are put down as medical terms which
the author of the Acts may just as well have
owed to his undoubted familiarity with the
LXX. But, when all deductions have been
made, there remains a body of evidence that
the author of the Acts naturally and inevitably

14 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
slipped into the use of medical phraseology,
which seems to me irresistible. It is needless
to insist on the significance of such a coincidence
between a casual expression of St. Paul's as to
the alleged author of the Acts and of the third
Gospel and a characteristic of these Books which
lies so far beneath the surface that only by a
laborious investigation has it been fully brought
to light within the last century. Dr. Hobart's
work has been published nearly twenty years.
So far as I have observed, it has remained
unnoticed by the assailants of the traditional
view of the third Gospel and the Acts.
Such are the two estimates of the Book,
which, speaking generally, offer themselves
to-day for our acceptance. If we allow our
selves for the sake of convenience to use
terms, both of which are open to serious mis
understanding, we may call them respectively
the "critical" view and the "traditional" view.
It is natural to turn from this main question
to one closely related to it, viz. the problem of
the " sources " of the Book. What authorities
did the writer follow ?

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 15
I have said that the literary analysis of the
Acts as a clue to the written documents out of
which it was thought to be built up is a study
which has had a fascination for certain Con
tinental scholars, The remarkable characteristic
of these efforts is that they have been inde
pendent and isolated. They are of interest
as the record of the impressions of ingenious
individuals ; but they have proved too subjective
and too arbitrary to command anything ap
proaching a general acceptance. They have
not been confirmed by progress towards a
coherent theory. May I without presumption
state how my own opinion on this question of
the sources of the Acts has been modified ? I
began the study of the Acts some years ago in
the full expectation that I should discover signs
of the use of various written documents. The
investigation appeared at first to promise
success. I found differences of phraseology
in the several sections of the Book. But when
after a time I reviewed the evidence and asked
myself whether it was such as would bear the
weight of a theory of different literary sources,
I was constrained to confess that the variations

16 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
of style which I could trace were only such as
might be expected in a sympathetic author,
whose manner instinctively answered to his
immediate subject, or such as any writer may
observe in his own case if he lays aside his
work and resumes it after an interval.
If then our own resources fail us, let us
interrogate the writer himself. It seems clear
that before the four Gospels were brought to
gether and made into a separate collection, the
two Lucan Books, the Gospel and the Acts, must
have been circulated together as the two parts
of one work. When therefore the Acts im
mediately followed the Gospel, the Preface pre
fixed to the earlier treatise would naturally be
regarded as an Introduction common to them
both. If this view seems strange to us, it is only
because the familiar order of our New Testament
prevents us from realizing how truly one the two
Books are. That the author himself had both
parts of his history in mind when he wrote the
Preface is, I believe, the inference which we
naturally draw from a study of his language.
Thewords "concerning those matterswhich have
been fulfilled among us" seem strangely poor and

i THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 17
indefinite, if they refer only to the life and work
of Jesus Christ. An inclusive phrase, on the
other hand, was necessary if the subject-matter
both of the Gospel and of the Acts was within
the writer's purview. Again, the two sides of the
characteristics claimed for the primary witnesses
become in this view full of significance. Their
qualification as "eye-witnesses" is important
mainly in relation to the events of the Lord's
life and, we may add, of the Day of Pentecost ;
their qualification as " ministers of the word "
is concerned rather with the story of Apostolic
work.1 Once more, whatever difficulty may be
felt in interpreting the words " to write unto
thee in order " — a phrase implying some kind of
chronological arrangement (comp. Acts xi. 4) —
when it is understood to apply only to St. Luke's
Gospel, vanishes at once if the reference is to
the whole course of the long history which
began with the birth of the Baptist and ended
with the sojourn of St. Paul in Rome.
If then St. Luke's Preface refers to the Acts
1 The form of the phrase (ol aw apxfy airbwrai Kal iw-qpirai
yevd/ievoi tov X<57ou) appears to shew that only one set of persons is
meant. Compare Acts xxvi. 16, irpaxeipio-atrBal <re iw-qpirriv ml /i&prvpa
i>» re etSis jite Siv re 6<p6i)Goii.al 001. C

18 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
as. much as to the Gospel, we learn that he knew
of written narratives dealing with the history
of the Apostolic Church ; that the ultimate
authority for such narratives was the evidence
of those who had been eye-witnesses and them
selves active workers ; that St. Luke to these
documents already in circulation added yet
another, because he had had special oppor
tunities for investigating the whole course of the
history. We could wish that in this Preface
he had told us explicitly the sources of his infor
mation. He has chosen rather to leave his
readers to infer what they were from his in
direct statements. On the one hand, since there
were written narratives current, based, as he
tells us, on the best kind of information, it is
probable that he was acquainted with them
and influenced by them. But it is at least true
that he lightly passes over his relations to his
predecessors in the field. On the other hand,
his words " even as they delivered them unto
us " and " it seemed good to me also, having
traced the course of all things accurately from
the first," seem clearly to imply that his own
special qualification for his task (over and

i THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 19
above any immediate knowledge of events
which he may have had) lay in his personal
intercourse with the actors in the scenes which
he relates. Can we then with certainty, or with
real probability, point to St. Luke's having been
brought into contact with those whose testi
mony, taken together, would cover the whole
field of the Acts ?
St. Paul himself is without "doubt the most
obvious and the most important witness. Dur
ing the three months' sojourn on the island and
during the Apostle's captivity for two years at
Rome, there was ample opportunity for St.
Luke to learn the story of St. Paul's life.
From him too, the pupil of Gamaliel and
possibly a member of the Sanhedrin, he may
well have gained his knowledge of what passed
in the council when the Apostles "were put
forth a little while" (v. 34 ff). And here
it is well worth noting that, even if the Epistle
to the Galatians were the only Epistle of St.
Paul preserved to us, we should be assured
that the Apostle saw the importance of the
history of the Church's past for her guidance
in the future, and discerned something of the

20 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
significance of his own conversion and of his
own characteristic work in the fulfilment of the
divine purpose. We are growing accustomed
to regarding St. Paul as an "ecclesiastical
statesman." It may well be the case that St.
Paul, with his large views and wide culture, saw
how great a purpose the authentic story of
" the beginning of the Gospel " would serve in
the years, few -or many, which lay before the
Church on earth ; and that, perceiving the
literary power of "the beloved physician," he
himself laid on St. Luke the task of writing the
first history of the Apostolic age. I venture to
suggest that it is to St. Paul we owe the con
ception of the Book of the Acts.
There were only two persons from whom the
account of what took place on the road to Gaza
could ultimately have been derived, Philip and
the Eunuch. With the former the writer of the
Acts stayed "many days" on the journey to
Jerusalem (xxi. 10). From Philip he could learn
the facts about the appointment of the Seven
and the evangelization of Samaria, and doubt
less also details of still earlier days. Again, the
writer of the Acts was a companion of St. Paul

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 21
when the latter paid his last eventful visit to
Jerusalem. It is clear from the narrative of
the Acts that he became known to James, the
official head of the Church at Jerusalem, and
to "the elders" (xxi. 18). The portion of
the Acts which follows this notice deals with
the purely personal history of St. Paul, and the
writer has no opportunity of alluding to his
own movements. Since, however, the narrative
certifies us that he was with St. Paul just before
the latter's arrest at Jerusalem, and since he
reappears at the Apostle's side on the eve of
the voyage to Rome (xxvii. i), it is reasonable
to infer that he spent part, if not the whole, of
the interval in Jerusalem and in Caesarea. It
is needless to insist at length what treasures of
information of many kinds were within his reach
during these many months. Once more, from
the Epistle to the Colossians (iv. 10, 14) we
learn that, when St. Luke was at Rome, " Mark,
the cousin of Barnabas," was one of those old
comrades who gathered round the Apostle.
The house of Mary, the mother of Mark, was,
it would appear, the home of St. Peter when he
revisited Jerusalem (xii. 12 ff). When early

22 HULSEAN LECTURES , lect.
tradition designates St. Mark as " the inter
preter of Peter," we may infer with great pro
bability that Mark accompanied that Apostle
when he left Jerusalem and began his labours,
in towns where he had to deal with a Greek-
speaking population.1 Thus the testimony of
St. Mark would extend to the events connected
with his kinsman Barnabas, to St Paul's first
journey, and, we may add with something like
certainty, to the earliest days of the Church's life
and to all that happened during St. Peter's
sojourn at Lydda and Joppa and Caesarea.
There is then no part of the history con
tained in the Acts with a primary authority for
which, if we accept the natural interpretation
of the passages where the first person plural is
used, we have not good grounds for saying
that the writer had opportunities for personal
communication. And here I venture on what may seem, at
first sight, less secure ground.2 That St. Peter.
paid a visit of some duration to Rome is an
1 I may refer to my article on Mark (John) in Hastings' Dictionary
of the Bible, iii. pp. 245 ff.
2 See my article on Peter (Simon) in Hastings' Dictionary of the
Bible, iii. pp. 769 ff., 778 ; cojnp. pp. 790 ff. ,

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 23
opinion supported by the unanimous voice of
all early evidence. Only less clear and constant
is the testimony that he suffered in the Neronian
persecution of a.d. 64. We are thus brought
very near the time when we are certain (if
we accept as genuine the Epistle to the Colos-
sians and the Second Epistle to Timothy) that
St. Luke was in the capital (Col. iv. 14, 2 Tim.
iv. 1 1). For myself, I am inclined to go a step
further. Irenaeus, a witness who certainly was
in contact with trustworthy traditions of the
Apostolic age, speaks expressly of St. Peter
and St. Paul as working together in Rome
(iii. 1. 1, ed. Massuet). Such also is the tenor
of no small amount of early evidence. Now it
is hardly possible to conceive that, when once
St. Paul had taken the Apostolic oversight of
the Church of Rome, St. Peter, apart from St.
Paul, could have planned a visit there. But
did he come to Rome, before St. Paul's first
captivity was over, at St. Paul's own request ?
Such an invitation would be a practical corollary
to the Epistle to the Ephesians, and in complete
harmony with St. Paul's far-seeing policy and
large-hearted enthusiasm for unity. If this

24 HULSEAN LECTURES lect;
was so, there is hardly room for doubt that the.
historian of the Apostolic Church had oppor
tunities of correcting and deepening his know
ledge of the events of the first days by what
he learned from the lips of the chief actor in
those scenes. I do not venture to press this
suggestion as one which, with the evidence at
present available, can ever attain to more than
a measure of probability. But whether it be
accepted or not, the likelihood remains that the
writer of the early chapters of the Acts met
and conversed with St. Peter at Rome.
Such being the writer's opportunities, what
kind of history have we a right to expect ?
By what standard shall we judge the work ?
To read a good deal of the criticism of the
Acts, one would suppose that no reliance can
be placed on a writer who does not reach a
modern academic ideal, who does not attain to
that fulness and accuracy which we expect
nowadays from the conscientious writer of an
historical or biographical monograph — an ex
haustive collection of facts, and a critical use of
authorities. But if we try to form a living
picture of the possibilities of the writer, we

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 25
shall look for, and I venture to say that we shall
desire, no such laboured precision. The writer
has a direct personal knowledge of some part
of his subject. As to another period, he retains
a vivid remembrance of a conversation with an
eye-witness. In regard to a third, he has a
record, roughly and hastily written down, of
what he learned from one of " the ministers of
the word" — the outline or the substance of a
speech, the account of some episode of danger
and deliverance. As he is weaving all this
varied information into a connected whole, he
finds that he has lost the clue to the exact
meaning of some event, or that he has preserved
a record only of the bare fact of a particular
journey. His informant is no longer at his
side. He cannot communicate with him. At
this point, therefore, he has no choice but to
set down a meagre and summary statement.
And hence there is a want of proportion in his
work which is alien to our modern literary
ideas. And yet I venture to say that, brief as the
Book is, considering the areaof events overwhich
it travels, it gives a picture of the characters of
the chief actors and of the progress of events

26 . HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
infinitely more instinct with life and movement
than a scientific presentation of the history.
could have done. The Book in this respect
is like a mediaeval Church. Modern mechanical
contrivances would have secured an accuracy
of measurement and a precision of correspond
ence which are wanting in the older work.
But that older work, whatever its technical
defects, has an eloquence and a pathos which
are beyond the reach of the better equipped
efforts of our own day. We admire it and love
it, partly for the strange beauty of its details,
partly because of the inspiration which we draw
from it as a whole.
One crucial point in the criticism of the Acts
lies in the relation of the Book to the Epistles of
St. Paul. A writer in the time gf Ignatius or
of Clement, who was as deeply interested in St.
Paul as the author of the Acts, would certainly
have known andused some at least of the Epistles
of that Apostle. The Acts may indeed be not
inaptly called, as Luther (quoted by Zahn,
Einleitung, ii. p. 408) said, " a comment on St.
Paul's Epistles." Yet the "comment" is all
the more pointed because it is undesigned. As

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 27
a matter of fact, the Book contains no reference
to the composition of any of St. Paul's letters,
and shews no sign of their influence — a strong
confirmation of an early date.
We may allow that between the Acts and
St. Paul's Epistles there are discrepancies which
perhaps do not admit of a formal and complete
reconciliation. But they are, I believe, just
such as would be due either to gaps in the
writer's knowledge which, unless he wrote with
St. Paul constantly at his side, would be inevit
able, or to that change in the perspective of
events which fortunately comes with time. If
a son were in some thirty or forty pages to
write the eventful story of his father's life,
parts of which he had himself watched, of parts
of which he had often heard his father speak, we
should be surprised and disappointed if, should
a packet of his father's old letters be discovered,
we gained no clearer view of the sequence and
the details of events, no fresh insight into the
father's character, no new evidence as to the
father's estimate of his relations with his con
temporaries at a great crisis long past.
To sum up : it is not too much, I think, to

28 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
say that the Lucan authorship of the Acts is
the one assumption which gives a natural and
adequate explanation (i) of the fact that, at the
end of the second century and at the beginning
of the third, St. Luke was accounted its author
by writers representing the chief Churches of
Christendom ; (2) of internal characteristics of
the Book, the traces of medical phraseology in
the language and the abrupt transition from the
third person of the historian to the first person
of the eye-witness. Further, (3) it enables us to
give a reasonable account of the sources whence
the writer derived his knowledge of the events,
widely separated in time and place, which he
records. But the "traditional"theorymust be subjected
to a more exacting and a more detailed trial.
When Professor Harnack places the composi
tion of the Acts between the years 80 and 93
a.d., it is clear that the difference between his
view and the " traditional " view is concerned not
so much with the date as with the character
of the Book. Does the Book then, when we
examine its contents, produce the impression of

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 29
being history or largely romance? Does it,
as we traverse the high-road which the writer
marks out for himself, bear witness to its own
substantial truthfulness ? What then, we ask, is
that high-road ? What is the purpose and
what the plan of the Book ?
In the opening paragraph the writer records
words spoken by our Lord to the Apostles just
before the final separation on the Mount of
Olives. He obviously regards them as an
utterance of unique solemnity and significance.
"Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost
is come upon you ; and ye shall be my
witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea
and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part
of the earth. And when he had said these
things, as they were looking, he was taken
up ; and a cloud received him out of their
sight'' (i. 3 f). By these words of Christ the
aim and the plan of the Book are determined.
It is not an apology nor a series of biographical
notices. It is a history, the history of an epoch
of revelation. It records the commentary
written by events on the Lord's promise and
the Lord's commission — the gift of the Spirit,

30 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
and the witness of the Apostles as the field of
the Church's activity broadened, until the Church
became a world-wide power,
The fulfilment of the Lord's promise of the
Spirit has the foremost place in the record ;
and the history of the day of Pentecost brings
us at once face to face with important matters
bearing on the credibility of the Book.
i. The writer of the Book of the Acts,
unlike a modern historian, is not at pains to fill
in all the details of his picture. He concerns
himself primarily with men. Notices of time
and place are often perplexingly indistinct.
St. Luke tells us that, both before and after
the day of Pentecost, the Apostles were " con
tinually in the Temple" (Luke xxiv. 53, Acts
ii. 46). They went thither at the appointed
hours of prayer (iii. 1). Their Master's
presence there had consecrated it anew for
them. Thither they probably had gone with
Him on the eve of the Passover, and there
they had listened to His prayer of consecra
tion (John xvii. ; comp. xviii. 1). As at the
Passover (Jos. Antiq. xviii. ii. 2), so at Pente-

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 31
cost, we are told, "it was the custom of the
priests to open the gates of the Temple at
midnight." There the crowds of worshippers
came, that before the morning sacrifice their
offerings might be examined by the priests ;
and there, in the Temple courts, they waited
for the solemnities of the Feast (Edersheim, The
Temple, pp. 228 ff.). Were the Apostles likely
to be anywhere but in the Temple that night
when the holy feast was already beginning ?
Does not the writer assume that his readers
will understand, without any explicit statement
on his part, that the Apostles, like other pious
Jews, would naturally resort to the Temple
"when the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled"?
When we read the record once more with
these thoughts in our minds, the language of
the historian is seen to harmonize with the view
that the Temple was the scene of the Pente
costal gift. " They were all together in one
place." We remember that St. Paul twice uses
almost the same phrase of assembling for
worship (1 Cor. xi. 20, xiv. 23; comp. Clem.
xxxiv. 7, Ign. Philad. vi. 2). Again, the word
"house" — "it filled all the house where they

32 HULSEAN LECTURES lect. .
were sitting" — is the regular term both in the
LXX. and in Josephus for the chambers of the
Temple.1 Further, St. Luke tells us that "the
multitude came together " {awri\6e to 7rXrjdo<;, ii.
6). The expression " the multitude " (to TrXfjOos)
— note the definite article — is employed, both
in St. Luke's Gospel and in the Acts, of the
crowd of worshippers in the Temple courts
(Luke i. 10, Acts xxi. 36 ; comp. v. I. in xxi.
2 2, (TvveXdelv to Tf\fj8os).
I do not stop to dwell on the profound
significance of the Temple as the place where
the supreme gift was given and the dispensation
of the Spirit was inaugurated. My point is a
much more prosaic one. Note first that, if the
Temple is the locality intended, obscurities in
the narrative are at once removed. The
presence of large numbers of Jews of the
Dispersion, and the immediate gathering of
" the multitude " to the place where the
Apostles were, are explained. The worshippers
waiting in the Temple courts flocked to "the
house" — the chamber in the Temple — "where
1 See, e.g., Jer. xlii. (xxxv.) 4, xliii. (xxxvi.) 10, 12. 20 f. ; Jos.
Antiq. VII. xiv. 10.

i THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 33
the Apostles were sitting." Again, if "the
house " was a house in one of the narrow streets
of the city, how could so vast a multitude have
come together and have listened to St. Peter's
words? And note, in the second place, that,
when a writer faintly hints at an important
detail which he does not explicitly state, —
when he leaves his readers to gather it from
the general tenor of his narrative and from his
casual expressions, — we may, if we will, criticize
his lack of fulness and of clearness, but at least
we feel that here we have a sign that he is
telling us a real history.
2. I turn next to a deeper and more
anxious question. " There appeared unto
them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire ;
and it sat upon each one of them " (ii. 3).
Negative critics put aside the whole story
of Pentecost as plainly mythical, modelled
on Jewish legends of the giving of the Law.
Orthodox writers, so far as I have observed,
pass over the words without discussion. And
yet am I wrong in thinking that some who
do not dream of questioning a miraculous
element, as we speak, in the history of the
D

34 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Lord's ministry and of Apostolic times, read
these few words not without a distressing
sense of perplexity and misgiving ? We ask
the question, What really happened ? What was
really seen by the eyes of the Apostles ? It
may be — I dare not question the possibility —
that at this supreme crisis of revelation God
willed to "create a new thing in the earth" —
fiery shapes in the semblance of tongues diffus
ing themselves on the heads of men. But, to
speak, with reverent frankness, such a manifes
tation seems to be a wonder of a different order
from the miracles of the New Testament. It
would stand alone. Far be it from me in any
way to dogmatize. But are we indeed obliged
to choose between an absolutely literal interpre
tation of these words and, on the other hand,
a rejection of the narrative as historical ? It is,
I venture to urge, a legitimate position that we
have here an instance of the mystical interpreta
tion of the divinely -ordered occurrence of a
natural phenomenon. May not He who, by
what we call natural means, shrouded the cross
of the Son of God in darkness 1 have ordained
1 " The original account (Mt. Mc.) seems to be satisfied by the

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 35
that, at the moment when the illuminating
Spirit was poured upon the Church, the sunlight
of a new day smote upon the Apostles ? And
if so, was it unnatural that Christians should see
a deeper meaning in the sun's rays streaming
through the colonnades and the arches of the
Temple and resting upon the Apostles, and
connecting the sight with the wonders of Apo
stolic utterance which ensued, should play upon
a not uncommon use of the word "tongue,"
and speak of "tongues like as of fire" resting
¦ on the Apostles ? Thus the two outward and
visible phenomena in the physical world — the
rush of the wind and the apocalypse of the sun
light — marked that morning hour of the day of
Pentecost as the supreme crisis of the Church's
inspiration and of the Church's enlightenment.
In the compressed narrative of the Acts at this
point St. Luke has blended the language of
history and the* language of the allegorical
interpretation of history.
3. We pass to another difficulty when we
hypothesis of an extraordinary gloom due to natural causes, and coin
ciding with the last three hours of the Passion " (Dr. Swete on Mc.
xv. 33)-

36 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
approach the problems suggested by the account
of the gift of tongues. "In ii. 5-1 1," writes
Professor Ramsay,1 who yet is an enthusiastic
champion of St. Luke's claims to be regarded as
an historian of the first rank, " another popular
tale seems to obtrude itself. In these verses
the power of speaking with tongues, which is
clearly described by Paul as a species of pro
phesying (i Cor. xii. 10 f, xiv. 1 f), is taken in
the sense of speaking in many languages. Here
again we observe the distorting influence of
popular fancy."
Let us at once compare the two accounts —
St. Luke's and St. Paul's — of this "manifesta
tion of the Spirit."
In the First Epistle to the Corinthians
St. Paul asserts that this gift of ecstatic utter
ance took different forms. There were " divers
kinds of tongues " (xii. 28). When therefore
he speaks of " the tongues of men " (xiii. 1), and
when, to enforce his view that tongues were a
sign to unbelievers, he quotes (xiv. 21) some
words of Isaiah (xxviii. 1 1 f.) which held out
1 Professor Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveller, p. 370) refers in the im
mediately preceding context to "the episode of Ananias and Sapphira.''

i THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 37
the threat that God would speak to rebellious
Israel through the Assyrian invader with his
strange dialect, the Apostle appears to imply
that speech in foreign languages had a place
among the phenomena in question. Moreover,
according to St. Paul, a bystander was some
times able to interpret, to translate, what
another man said "in a tongue" (xii. 10, xiv.
28). Here it is most natural to suppose that
an ecstatic utterance in a foreign language is
•fneant, incomprehensible to the speaker but
intelligible to one who knew the language. It
is worth noting that, while St. Paul speaks of
prophecy and other spiritual endowments as
existing in many regions, the only place
where, so far as we know, he had to deal
with the gift of tongues was one of the
busy commercial ports of the Roman world,
where men from every nation, Jews and
Gentiles, for a time made their home. It is
quite in accordance with facts collected by
students of mental phenomena to suppose that
foreign words heard casually in this meeting-
place of nations might be unconsciously repro
duced in the abnormal fervour of religious

38 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
emotion.1 The probabilities of the case then
and the language used by St. Paul alike give
support to the view that speech in a foreign
language was one among the many forms of
glossolalia at Corinth. It should be added that,
according to St. Paul, these utterances were
addressed to God rather than to men. They
were mainly prayers, doxologies, thanksgivings.
When from the Epistle to the Corinthians
we turn to the far briefer account of the
"tongues" on the day of Pentecost, we are
struck at once by an important point of simi
larity. The utterances of the Apostles at Jeru
salem, like those of the disciples at Corinth, are
described, not as instruction, not as exhortation,
but as praise. " We do hear them speaking . . .
the mighty works of God " (ii. 1 1 ; comp. Apoc.
xv. 3 ff). We most naturally, I believe, picture
the Apostles, like Zacharias in much earlier days
when he was "filled with the Holy Ghost"
1 See the late Dean Plumptre's article on the " Gift of Tongues"
in Smith's Diet, of the Bible, iii. p. 1561. I am indebted to the Rev.
A. Wright for pointing out to me an interesting article by Mr. R.
Heath in the Contemporary Review, vol. xlix. pp. 117 ff. (Jan. 1886),
on "The Little Prophets of the Cevennes." I am glad to find that, in
my treatment of this subject, I am in general agreement with Mr.
Wright (Some New Testament Problems, pp. 277 ff).

i THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 39
(Luke i. 67 ff.), as bursting forth into "benedic
tions " drawn from the rich liturgical store of
the Jewish Church — such as we find, for ex
ample, in that most ancient service of praise
and prayer, the Eighteen Benedictions} But
the Apostles spoke the praises of God in
different languages. That is plainly the
writer's meaning. Now there is evidence that
the authorities in Palestine sanctioned the use
of any language whatever in repeating the
Shema, the Eighteen Benedictions, and the
Grace at Meals.2 At other feasts, then, the
Apostles had heard strangers of the Disper
sion • reciting these doxologies in the various
languages most familiar to them. Now they
in turn themselves, seeing before them Jew
ish worshippers from many countries, with
memories supernaturally quickened, recall and
rehearse in the different languages the accus
tomed words of praise.

1 The student will find the Eighteen Benedictions (the Pales
tinian and the Babylonian recensions) in the original in Prof. Dalman's
Die Worte Jesu, pp. 299 ff. An English translation is given in
Schiirer, History of the Jewish People, Eng. Trans., II. ii. pp. 85 ff.,
also in Bp. Westcott's Hebrews, pp. 206 ff.
2 Schiirer, History of the Jewish People, Eng. Trans., II. ii. p. 284.

4o HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Here, too, St. Luke discerned a symbolical
meaning. The new spiritual endowment of the
Church inaugurates a reversal of the curse of
separation. What we may term the very acci
dents accompanying the advent of the Spirit
are a pledge of the catholicity of the Church — a
sign that the Church should be the one home of
men of every language and race (comp. Col.
iii. ,11). The historian recalls the language of
the ancient story which told of the confusion of
tongues (Gen. xi. 7 ff.) ; and it is plain that his
language in recording the events of Pentecost
is moulded by the remembrance.
If then we have rightly interpreted St.
Paul's account of " the tongues " at Corinth,
and St. Luke's record of the marvels of Pente
cost, we find that what was an occasional
element in the often-repeated manifestation of
"tongues" at the Greek seaport was the one
form which the gift took at the crisis of its first
appearance at Jerusalem.
4. Lastly, passing from details, let us ask
ourselves a wider question — What is the signi
ficance in the history of the Church of the gift
of the Spirit at Pentecost? The disciples,

i THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 41
" the firstfruits unto God from among men," had
been disciplined and trained during the months
of the Saviour's ministry. That was the period,
it may be said, of the Church's catechumenate.
The day of the Passion and the day of the
Resurrection were the season of the new birth.
On the evening of the first Easter day (Jn. xx.
19 ff. ) the Lord, in the upper room at Jerusaj^m,
greeted the representatives of the new Society
with the blessing of His peace, and then by
His sacramental act — " He breathed on them "
— and by His quickening word — " Receive ye
the Holy Ghost " — He made them partakers of
His own risen life. The Church henceforth
lived. Henceforth there was, there is, on earth
the one Body of Christ. But the divine work
of renewal was not yet complete. On the dayt
of Pentecost to the gift of the new life there
was added the gift of the new endowment. If
Easter day was the day of the Church's birth,
Pentecost was the day of the Church's unction,
the Church's sealing. To use the phrase which
gathers up many hallowed associations for our
selves, Pentecost was the day of the Church's
confirmation. Henceforth the life of the one

42 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Body was controlled, guided, inspired by the
one Spirit.
Now turn to the history and see how it
harmonizes with what reflexion points to as
the meaning of Pentecost. St. Luke in the
brief interval of waiting which preceded the
day of Pentecost places one event, the choice of
St. Matthias. The Church lived, and action is
the sign of life. The Church acted, acted in
the realization that her action on earth must be
the reproduction and manifestation of the Lord's
action in glory (i. 24, ov e'£eXe£w). But com
munion with the unseen Lord is not sought in
an inner and spiritual presence. There is no
trust in an inspired rightfulness of judgment.
The disciples look for a revelation of the
Lord's will through the earthly and mechanical
expedient of casting lots. The Church lived ;
the Church acted. But the action is the action
of spiritual immaturity.
After the day of Pentecost all is changed.
Henceforth the life of the Church is the revela
tion of the Spirit. In the Acts the Spirit is
represented as the inspirer of the utterances of
Christ's chosen witnesses ; as giving definite

I THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 43
directions at the great crises of the Church's
expansion ; as controlling the choice of the
ministers of the word ; as creating and
moulding the character of typical workers ; as
enabling men to discern beforehand the path of
suffering which lay before them and their
fellows ; as touching the life of the disciples
with a more than earthly joy and enthusiasm.
Thus the Acts is the detailed commentary on
all those sayings of the Apostles which speak
of the Christian brotherhood, endowed with
"the firstfruits of the Spirit" (Rom. viii. 23) —
is not this Pauline phrase a definite reference
to Pentecost, the Feast of Firstfruits, as the
occasion of the divine gift? — as "living by the
Spirit," " walking by the Spirit," enlightened by
the Spirit. The two pictures of the Church's
life in the first days, that given in the Acts and
that given in the Apostolic Epistles, are
independent. The Epistles give no such infor
mation as to the manner of the Spirit's working
as could have suggested the details of the Acts.
The two pictures are independent ; but as we
study them with care, they are seen to be com
plementary and harmonious.

44 HULSEAN LECTURES lect. i
We are the brethren, the younger brethren,
of the Apostles and of the earliest saints. We
have been born again into the same family of
the Father in which they lived and now live
and wait. The veil," withdrawn for a brief
season, for us hides the workings of the Spirit.
But the Spirit is present with us as He was
with them. The supreme gift has not been
withdrawn. By the counsel of the same Spirit
we choose our way of service. In the strength
of the same Spirit we strive to do the work
which the Father gives us to do. In the light
of the same Spirit we see God.

LECTURE II

"Ececee uou uapTupcc eN Te "lepoucaAHJU Kal eN ndcH
th 'lou9a(g Kai Cauapig Kal &oc gcxotou thc rAc.

24TH Sunday after Trinity,
November 25, 1900.

II

' ' Ye shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judsea and
Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." — Acts i. 8.
The Book of the Acts is the Gospel of the
Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit works and
speaks through men. The voice of the Spirit
is the testimony of the disciple. Last week I
asked you to consider St. Luke's treatment of
one side of his subject. To-day we approach
the other side — the widening circles of the
witness which the Apostles bore to the Lord
Jesus Christ.
" Ye shall be my witnesses." The expression
which St. Luke represents our Lord as using,
simple as it is, is full of meaning. It has a
history. In the second part of Isaiah the
prophet draws a magnificent picture of a great
assize (Is. xliii. off. ; comp. xliv. 8 ff. ). Jehovah
47

48 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
puts Himself on His trial. His claims to
sovereignty become the subject of a universal
controversy. On the one side all the nations
are assembled together ; on the other, Israel,
now chastened and restored — Jehovah's sons
brought "from far and His daughters from
the end of the earth." The nations are
challenged to produce their witnesses and to
sustain the pretensions of their gods. There is
silence ; the appeal is unanswered. Then
Jehovah turns to Israel, who has known Him.
"Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my
servant whom I have chosen ... Ye are
my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and I am God."
The great assize is now no longer a prophetic
vision. Henceforth it is to be wrought out
in the daily struggles and triumphs of the
Christian Church. The supreme messenger
of Jehovah is renewing the ancient challenge.
Israel after the flesh by their rejection of
Him has proved unworthy of the prerogative
once theirs. They are no longer Jehovah's
witness to the nations. They have rather
passed over into the ranks of those who
must receive the testimony of others. The

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 49
Apostles, the representatives and prophets of
the new Israel of God, are bidden to take up
the abdicated office, and, themselves the first
recipients of a final salvation, to be Jehovah's
witnesses to all the world. Thus Christ's
parting words seem designed to mark alike
the continuity of revelation and the passing
away of the old order.
With the great landmarks of this expansion,
laid down by Christ, the author of the Acts
deliberately and designedly makes the main
divisions of the Book to correspond.
Jerusalem is the starting-point. The Church
is first the Church of Jerusalem. Its first home
and centre is the Temple.
The Church of Jerusalem grows into the
Church of Palestine — "in all Judaea1 and
Samaria." The Church spreads to those who
by race and by religion were half Jew and half
Gentile. St. Luke carefully marks the be
ginning of this transitional period with the
words : " They were all scattered abroad
1 'lovSala is here used in the larger sense which it often bears ; com
pare, e.g., Jos. Antiq. 1. vii. 2 (ds ttjv t6tc fih Xavavaiav \eyo^(vt)v vvi
U 'lovSatan juery'/oj/ce), Tacitus Hist. ii. 78 (Haec [Caesarea] Judaeae
caput est), Luke iv. 44, Acts x. 37. E

50 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria"
(viii. i). He closes this section of his history
with the emphatic note of success: "So the
church throughout all Judaea and Galilee
and Samaria had peace, being builded up"
(ix. 31).
Lastly, the Church of Palestine becomes the
Church of the world — " unto the uttermost part
of the earth." Again, the phrase chosen, like
the words "Ye shall be my witnesses," is an
echo from the great evangelical prophecies of
the second Isaiah. Nor is it by chance that this
expression meets us only once again in this
Book — indeed, only once again in the New
Testament. At that supreme crisis of his
missionary work, when apparently for the first
time he was constrained by the unbelief of the
Jews to turn to the Gentiles, St. Paul found his
course clearly marked out for him by the
prophetic words : " I have set thee for a light
of the Gentiles, That thou shouldest be for
salvation unto the uttermost part of the earth "
(xiii. 47, quoted from Is. xlix. 6 ; comp. Is. xiv.
22). The two passages — the one telling us
of the primary command of Christ, the other

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 51
of the resolve of St. Paul — stand to each other
in the closest relation.
" Unto the uttermost part of the earth " —
the phrase is to us final and prophetic in its
universality. For the Apostles and for St.
Luke it would necessarily have a narrower
meaning. There can be little doubt that to a
Palestinian Jew the capital of the Roman
Empire would symbolize the idea of world-wide
extension. In the Psalms of Solomon, for
example, Pompey is described as " he who came
from the uttermost part of the earth " {tov atr
eV^arou t^? 7^?, viii. 16).
Jerusalem then is the starting-point, Rome
the goal, of the Apostolic witness of the first age.
If the Gospel made its way along the great
roads, and established itself in the cities and
colonies, of the Empire ; if at last the seed of
the kingdom of God, planted in Rome we know
not how, was watered and tended there by the
ministry of an Apostle, so that it grew into a
strong and vigorous tree, then the end of the
first chapter of the Church's history was reached.
The Church had attained to a typical catholicity.
Hence we may say that the subject of the

52 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Book of the Acts is the progress of the Apostolic
witness from the religious metropolis of Israel
to the political metropolis of the Empire, from
Jerusalem to Rome. Twice in the Book itself
do Jerusalem and Rome appear as the limits of
St. Paul's activity. He is planning that last
momentous journey to the Holy City, on which
he clearly felt that much depended. "After I
have been there," he said, " I must also see
Rome" (xix. 21). And as the divinely-ordered
course of events is beginning to unfold itself,
the purpose of the Apostle is confirmed by an
intimation of his Master's will : "As thou hast
testified concerning me at Jerusalem, so must
thou bear witness also at Rome" (xxiii. 11).
As we shall see presently, in the closing para
graph of the Book the narrative reaches a solemn
climax — rejection on the one side, unchecked
success and hope on the other. In relation
to the subject of the Book, the history, when
it has brought St. Paul to Rome, is complete.
The first treatise of St. Luke tells us of " all
that Jesus did and taught from the beginning
till ... he was taken up " (Acts i. 1 ; comp.
v. 22). The second records Christ's last com-

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 53
mand to His Apostles, and traces the stages of
its fulfilment. The two books cover the whole
ground (as St. Luke conceived it) of the history
of the origins of Christianity — the acts of Jesus
Christ, the acts of the Apostles.
Such is the plan of the Book. But in
the long drama of the Church's growth from
Jerusalem to Rome, the centre of interest is
the inclusion of the Gentiles in the one Body
of the Messiah, and the way in which this issue
was reached.
How far then does the record of the
expansion of the Church contained in the
Acts satisfy reasonable tests of truthfulness ?
Certainly it shews no trace of being the working
up into a connected story of fragmentary hints
drawn from the Apostolic writings. But does
it, we ask, bear the marks of being a romance
embodying current expectations ? Is it co
herent, and, on the side of the workers them
selves, is it natural — in harmony, that is, with
what we observe of human nature when brought
into contact with some revolutionary movement
of life and thought ?

54 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Let us then first inquire how the idea of
the catholicity of the Church would present
itself to the minds of men familiar with the
hopes of the Jews.
In the Old Testament the ultimate relation
of Israel to " the nations " occupies no insignifi
cant place. The essential universality of Israel's
mission in the world finds clear expression just
when the stamp of exclusiveness and isolation
seems to be set on the national life in its earliest
stage — "in thee shall all the families of the
earth be blessed " (Gen. xii. 3). But the glory
of this conception became, at least partially,
overclouded as the centuries passed by. In
the anticipations of the Prophets there are two
antithetical lines of prediction. On the one
side they draw a picture of judgment, through
the terrors of which the nations may, in relation
to the commonwealth of Israel, attain to the
position of religious helots {e.g. Mic. vii. 16 ff.).
On the other side we find a series of magnificent
representations of Israel as the evangelist, and
as the religious home, of "all the nations":
"Of Zion it shall be said, This one and that
one was born in her " (Ps. Ixxxvii. 5) ; " Nations

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 55
shall come to thy light, and kings to the bright
ness of thy rising" (Is. lx. 3).
But as time went on the vicissitudes of the life
of the chosen people hardened their feeling to
wards the surrounding Gentiles, whose religious
and moral degradation shocked them, and whose
scorn called forth a more than answering scorn.
The habit of mind which rejoiced to regard
judgment as the necessary portion of "the
nations" was strengthened when the Jews felt
the iron grasp of Rome tightening upon them.
Signs, indeed, of a deeper and holier conception
of God's dealings with the world are not wholly
wanting. " He " {i.e. the Messiah), we read
in the Psalms of Solomon (xvii. 38), " shall
' have mercy upon all the nations that come
before him in fear " (comp. Enoch xlviii. 4). A
prediction in the Apocalypse of Baruch (i. 4),
standing almost alone in Jewish literature,
startles us with the kindliness and the definite-
ness of its hope : " I will scatter this people
among the Gentiles, that they may do good to
the Gentiles." But, the history of the chosen
people being what it was, it was inevitable that
the sterner should be the dominant view.

56 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
These forecasts, both in earlier and in later
times, are vague, and, to speak generally, cata
strophic. The imagery is that of great conflicts,
awful days of divine judgment. Even when
the hope is kindlier and more generous, the
details of the picture of mercy are not filled in.
Those who dared to hope that the goodness of
the God of Israel would at last enfold "the
nations" in its embrace could not discern how
the consummation would be brought about.
From Jewish thought we turn to the example
and the words of our Lord Himself. Nothing
about our Lord's ministry, were we not so
familiar with the facts, would be more surpris
ing than its purely national character. " I was
not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of
Israel" (Matt. xv. 24). The Apostles, when
they leave Him for their evangelistic journey,
are warned against straying into any road lead
ing to the Gentiles (Matt. x. 5). It was in a
ministry as brief probably as a man's university
course and sternly limited to the most exclusive
portion of the most exclusive race that the sure
foundations of the Catholic Church were laid.
With the Resurrection there came the bringing

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 57
in of a wider hope. The independent accounts
in the first and in the third Gospels (not to
mention the Appendix to St. Mark's Gospel)
leave us in no doubt that among the final com
mands which the Lord laid upon His disciples
there was the one which commissioned them to
proclaim Him among "all the nations." But
even now, when all doubt as to the purpose of
God is removed, there is (so far as our know
ledge goes) a remarkable reserve on our Lord's
part. When He sent His Apostles out among
the towns and villages of their native land, He
gave them minute directions as to their conduct.
When He sent them forth into the world, there
is nothing recorded which leads us to think that
He told them anything of the manner in which
the great work should be begun, anything of
the first steps in that untrodden path, anything
of the conditions of the task which He left with
them, save only that its accomplishment should
be gradual. The difference between the two
occasions is not far to seek. It lay, it need
not be said, just in this, that now the Lord
promised to His Apostles the enlightenment
which the presence of the Holy Spirit would give.

58 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
The Paraclete would " guide them into all the
truth," and in spite of human waywardness
would enable them to interpret, and strengthen
them to use for the advancement of that truth,
the providential ordering of events.
Among the arguments which confirm our
belief in the divine origin of the Christian
society, not the least persuasive flows from the
contrast between the want of any precise and
detailed preparation of the Apostles for a world
wide mission, and, on the other hand, the un
doubted fact that two or three decades after
the Ascension thousands of Gentiles bore the
name of Jesus Christ and sacrificed everything
simply for His sake. But my special point
here is a much smaller one. Clearly the Gentile
world had no expectation of blessing through
Israel, still less any conception of the manner
in which they would be made to share in the
consummation of Israel's hope. Jewish fore
casts as to the destiny of " the nations " were
mostly adverse ; they were at best vague and
indefinite pictures of a far - off ingathering.
The commands of the Lord were explicit as to
the ultimate goal of the Gospel, but silent as to

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 59
the action which the Apostles should take in
the immediate future. The historian then who
chose as his subject the expansion of the Church,
already accomplished when he wrote, must have
either truthfully narrated facts which he had
been at pains to ascertain, or surrendered him
self to his imagination unguided and unchecked
by prophecy or current expectation.
What then, in fact, do we find ? In the first
place, in the speeches which St. Peter is repre
sented in the earlier chapters of the Acts as
addressing to the people and to the rulers the
great destiny of the Gospel is barely hinted
at. Does he quote the words of Joel which
speak of " all flesh " as the destined recipients
of the gift of the Spirit (ii. 17), and, weaving
together phrases of Joel and of Isaiah, declare :
" To you is the promise, and to your children,
and to all that are afar off, even as many as the
Lord our God shall call unto him " (ii. 39 ; comp.
Is. Ivii. 19, Joel ii. 32)? There is nothing to
shew that his horizon is wider than the horizon
of the Prophets. The days seemed at hand when
"all the Lord's people should be prophets"

60 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
(Num. xi. 29). The Jews from many lands,
who were listening to his words, were the pledge
of a larger national harvest. The promise of
the Spirit was for them and for their descendants
and for all faithful Israelites scattered abroad
throughout the world, for whose gathering
together into one restored people prayer was
continually made. Once, and once only, in
these earlier speeches of St. Peter does a sense
of the wider field of blessing certainly appear ;
and it appears in the form of insistence on the
prerogative of the Jew. The promise of the
blessing through Abraham's seed to all the
world prefaces the assurance : " Unto you first
God, having raised up his Servant, sent him to
bless you " (iii. 26 ; comp. Mark vii. 27). Am
I wrong in thinking that this preoccupation of
the Apostles, as they are represented in the Acts,
in the narrow sphere of national hopes, this
strange reticence as to the destiny of the Gospel
— our Lord's prophecy as to which the writer
has set in the forefront of his book, and which
before the Acts was written had become an
article of religious faith — are signs of a true and
faithful portraiture ?

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 61
From the Apostle's words in the early
speeches we turn to the history of the expansion
of the Church.
And first, what of the initiation of the forward
movement? "Our acquisition of India," Sir
John Seeley has told us, "was made blindly.
Nothing great that has ever been done by
Englishmen was done so unintentionally, so
accidentally, as the conquest of India" {The
Expansion of England, p. 179). Something of
the same kind must be said of the first stages
of the Church's expansion. There is nothing
religious, nothing even deliberate, about them.
There is no consciously decisive step, no con
sistent policy. The Apostles' action is not the
expression of an overwhelming sense of the
necessity of spiritual advance. The issue is
brought about simply as the result of a divinely-
ordered evolution of events. Again I venture
to say that the apparent casualness of the
history, its fragmentariness, its retrogressions,
are a strong guarantee of the substantial truth
of the record.
The turning-point comes in a difficulty con
nected with the charity organization of the

62 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Church. God uses "the base things of the
world," the trivialities of a petty dispute, to
carry on to a new stage His age-long purposes
for the race. There is no relation of fitness
between the occasion and the end. The mur-
muring of " the Hellenists against the Hebrews "
— a phrase which incidentally reveals the fact
that these two elements coexisted in the Church
at Jerusalem — led to the first definite step in the
way of organization ; and thus there was clothed
with the authority of office one who discerned
that the present was a transitional state of
things, that there were elements of unexpected
and unwelcome change inherent in the faith
of his Master, and who dared, especially in
the synagogues of the Hellenists, to proclaim
his belief. No doubt his enemies were re
strained by no sense of rigid truthfulness from
giving a sharper edge to his prophetic words.
But probably it needed little of malicious dis
tortion to lend to his utterances an altogether
revolutionary meaning. At the same time it
must not escape our notice that St. Stephen's
message was rather negative than positive.
He foretold rather a breaking with the

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 63
past than an advance into fresh fields of
work. St. Luke does not, as a modern historian
would have done, analyse the issues of events.
But, as the story flows naturally on, we feel that,
after the witness and the death of St. Stephen,
an inward change and an outward change came
over the Church.
With this alteration, or supposed altera
tion, in the aims and convictions of the
disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, the neutrality
of the Pharisees was at once sacrificed.
Gamaliel had cast over them the aegis of his
cautious protection. A pupil of Gamaliel now
throws his splendid genius and vigour into the
work of persecution. The disciples are ex
posed to the hatred not only of the aristo
cratic and unpopular Sadducees, but also of that
party which enjoyed the special reverence of
the people. Hence the fur^ of the first perse
cution of the Church. Hence, too, some eight
years later (for the fire once kindled was ever
ready to break forth in new directions), Herod,
whose policy it was to court the Pharisaic party
and so gain a wider popularity, "put forth his

64 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
hands to afflict " the leaders of the Church, and
found that his action "pleased the people." In
the earlier chapters of the Acts it is an im
portant sign of the writer's truthfulness that, in
absolute contrast to that state of things which
had come to prevail everywhere long before the
Book was written, the little community is
described as living in peaceful and happy rela
tions with the people generally. " They had
favour with all the people" (ii. 47). The
Sadducees " found nothing how they might
punish [the Apostles] because of the people "
(iv. 21). " The people magnified them " (v. 13).
With the death of St. Stephen this period comes
to an end. It could not be but that this new
universality of hatred had a profound effect on
the convictions of the disciples. They could
not but ask themselves fundamental questions
which they had been slow of heart as yet
to entertain — whether Jerusalem would be the
centre of the kingdom of their Master ; and
whether that kingdom would come through
the national life of Israel. In this time of
silent perplexity, as well as of overt danger,
may we not believe that words spoken by the

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 65
Lord were brought back to their memory,
and that they were trained, when now all men
spoke evil of them, to contemplate as possible
the passing away of the old order ?
The result of St. Stephen's witness, and
of the persecution which arose on his death,
was the scattering of the Church. Twice in
this immediate context (viii. i, 4), and once in
a later passage (xi. 19) in reference to this
period, the writer tells us that the disciples
" were dispersed " {8ieo-7rdpT}o-av). The word, I
believe, is deliberately chosen. It carries to a
further stage that conception of the Church's
life and office which, as we saw, found expres
sion in the Lord's last command. The re
generate Israel takes up the ministry of the
unfaithful Israel, and now becomes in the
providence of God a Dispersion — a SiaaTropd
— among "the nations." "I will scatter
this people among the Gentiles, that they
may do good to the Gentiles " {Apoc. Baruch
i. 4). This dispersion through the sword of the
persecutor begins the second period of the
history. The Church becomes the Church of
F

66 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Palestine. A writer drawing on his own ima
gination would surely have assigned the chief
part in this act of the drama to St. Peter, or at
least to an Apostle. As a matter of fact, the
evangelist of Samaria is the obscure Philip.
With him rests the initiation. His work is
confirmed by St. Peter and St. John ; and the
example of the Deacon is followed by the
Apostles — " They preached the Gospel to many
villages of the Samaritans" (viii, 25). Thus
the great concession is made ; pure Israelitish
descent is no longer a condition of membership
in the Church.
But a further and more significant work lay
before Philip. In language derived from the
history of Elijah1 the historian describes how
a divine direction bade the Evangelist go still
farther from Jerusalem, and take the great road
running southwards to Egypt ; and there,
apparently near the site of the ancient Gaza,
the explanation of the command was vouch
safed. A second monition of the Spirit impels
him to join himself to a chance traveller along
1 1 Kings xvii. 2, 9 f., 2 Kings i. 3, 15 ; comp. 1 Kings xiii. 18,
Tonah i. 2, iii. 2,

II THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 67
the road ; and one who, both from his race and
from his physical defect, was excluded from the
congregation of Israel, was baptized into Jesus
Christ. The Ethiopian Eunuch was, so far as
our knowledge goes, the first Gerttile Christian.
The incident is pregnant with meaning. But
in the Acts the story is told with the utmost
simplicity. There is nothing dramatic about
it. No word of comment is added to point
the moral. Philip, who takes the decisive
step, is a subordinate minister of the Church.
The writer is at no pains to magnify his office,
or to follow his history. Again using language
drawn from the history of Elijah and Elisha,1
St. Luke notes that an impulse of the Spirit
moved him to retrace his steps northwards, and
that at length he settled at Caesarea. Thus the
Evangelist did not return to Jerusalem, and the
baptism of the Gentile convert probably long
remained unknown to the disciples there. It
1 1 Kings xviii. 12, 2 Kings ii. 12, 16 f. ; comp. Ezek. e.g. iii.
14, viii. 3. That the phrase wvevfia K.vpiov ijpirairej/ rbv $l\iwwov is not
intended to imply a miraculous disappearance is clear from the next
sentence : Kal oi)k eZSev avrbv oiK^ri 6 eivovxos, iwopeiero yap ttji/ 6St>v
airov xatpoi". The yip explains the reason why "the Eunuch saw him
no more." When Philip abruptly left him, the Eunuch did not follow
him.

68 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
did not raise the questions which had to be
faced at a later time.1
One other event of unique importance falls
within this intermediate period — the conversion
of Saul of Tarsus. In the merciful irony of
God, he had been allowed to be the chief
instrument in the scattering of the Church.
Now he is set apart to make that seemingly
wasteful sowing fruitful for a distant harvest.
From a literary point of view the writer of
the Acts is singularly bold in giving, within the
brief compass of his book, three accounts of
the conversion, two of them forming parts of
speeches of St. Paul. To tell and to retell a
tale for the sake of doing so — that is, that it may
be presented from different points of view — is a
1 I have assumed in this paragraph the correctness of the prima
facie interpretation of the narrative, viz., that the conversion of the
Ethiopian Eunuch preceded the conversion of Cornelius. The relative
chronology of the Acts, however, is full of uncertainty. St. Luke
here (viii. 12, 26, 40, ix. 1, 32 ff, a. 1 ff), as elsewhere, is silent
as to indications of date. It is quite possible that the story of Philip's
work (which St. Luke gives, as he had doubtless learned it from Philip
himself, in the form of a continuous narrative) carries us on in time
beyond the conversion of St. Paul and St. Peter's visit to Csesarea.
But whatever the date of the baptism of the Eunuch was, there is no
reason to think that it became widely known or had any influence on
the growth of opinion in the Church.

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 69
literary device on which none can venture but
a writer conscious of great dramatic power.
And no one will maintain that the repetition of
this episode in the Acts is the tour de force of
a consummate artist. Nor, again, does the
supposition that the author wished to utilize
the versions of the history given in different
" documents " — even if on general grounds we
accepted this account of his sources of informa
tion — explain the repetition. The fitness of
the three accounts to the several occasions is a
sufficient refutation of the theory which regards
them as excerpts from different writings. The
simplest explanation is, I believe, confirmed by
repeated study of these three chapters of the
Acts. In the proper place in the Book St. Luke
gives the circumstantial account which he had
received, perhaps for the purpose of the history,
from St. Paul himself. In the later chapters
he reproduces his remembrance, aided doubt
less by his own written memoranda, of St. Paul's
apologia pro vita sua as he listened to it first
under the shadow of the Tower of Antonia and
afterwards in the Basilica of the Procurator at
Caesarea.

70 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
This is not the place for a detailed discus
sion of the relation between the three accounts
of St. Paul's conversion. It must suffice
to make two remarks. (i) The variations
between different accounts contained in a single
book are pro tanto the sign of a truthful
record. The writer at least has not forced
his materials into harmony. The really im
portant divergences in this case are explained
by the difference between a circumstantial
narrative and a rhetorical appeal. (2) In the
speech before Agrippa the Lord's words spoken
on the road to Damascus are amplified.1
The Apostle here seems to include within
the scope of his review his own deep appre
hension of the meaning of Christ's words
brought home to him by his later experience,2
and, we. may well believe, by those other
" visions and revelations of the Lord " of which
1 It is worth noting that four visions are mentioned in connexion
with the conversion : (l) the vision on the road to Damascus (ix. 4 ff.,
xxii. 7 ff, xxvi. 14 ff.) ; (2) the vision of Ananias (ix. 10 ff.), in
which we are doubtless meant to understand that he learned his
message to Saul (ix. 17, xxii. 14 ff.) ; (3) the vision of Saul (ix. 12) ;
(4) the vision of Saul after his return to Jerusalem (xxii. 17 ff).
2 Compare Bishop Westcott, Characteristics of the Gospel Miracles,
p. 121.

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 71
he did not doubt that he was the recipient
(2 Cor. xii. 1, Gal. ii. 1). A single phrase in
the Epistle to the Galatians shews that he
regarded the summons which came to himself
as analogous to the call of the Old Testament
prophets (Gal. i. 15, Is. xlix. i, Jer. i. 5). In
the same way expressions used in the apologia
before Agrippa recall divine words which were
spoken to Ezekiel and to Jeremiah at the
commencement of their ministry (Acts xxvi. 15,
Ezek. ii. 1 ; Acts xxvi. 17, Jer. i. 7 f. ; comp.
Acts xviii. 9 f). We can see how natural, how
almost inevitable, to St. Paul was the com
parison between himself and Jeremiah (Jer. i.
4-10) — the prophet separated for his ministry
before his birth ; like St. Paul, sent to his
own people on a mission of failure and
disappointment; appointed "a prophet unto
the nations " as St. Paul was " an apostle of the
nations" (Rom. xi. 13 ; comp. 1 Tim. ii. 7).
With all his wonderful courage of self-
revelation, St. Paul never in his Epistles
removes the veil which rested on the history of
his great change. We cannot therefore check
the history of the conversion in the Acts by

72 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
any detailed autobiographical notice in the
Apostle's writings. But his own words in
many places postulate some definite and
sensible crisis such as is related in the Acts.
{a) He believed that he had indeed seen the
risen Lord. It is often said that when the
Apostle describes the turning-point of his life
as the time when "it was the good pleasure of
God ... to reveal his Son in me " (Gal. i. 15 f),
he speaks of an inner and spiritual unveiling of
the Saviour to " the eyes of the heart," of which
St. Luke gives a coarse and materialized
version. Such criticism is only possible when
St. Paul's plain words elsewhere are forgotten
or explained away. The metaphor of the
untimely birth, which he employs in regard to
himself (1 Cor. xv. 8), implies a sudden, violent,
abnormal change which brought him weak and
immature into a new spiritual world. This
strange regeneration he connects with a sight
of the risen Christ which, he implies, was
strictly parallel to that granted to the first
witnesses to the Resurrection.
(/3) St. Paul believed, as we learn from the
Epistles, that he had received his commission

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 73
from the Lord Jesus Christ, whom his eyes had
indeed seen. In the three accounts of the
conversion given in the Acts, however the
details vary, however some of the incidents are
blended, the words of the primary call are
constant : " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou
me? ... I am Jesus whom thou persecutest"
(ix. 4 f, xxii. 7 f, xxvi. 14 f). That summons
was an appropriation : " I have called thee by
thy name : thou art mine" (Is. xliii. 1).
(7) St. Paul believed, as we learn from the
Epistles, that his characteristic work was that
he should be an Apostle to the Gentiles. The
responsibility of assuming an office so revolu
tionary would have been too great, too awful
for any man, trained in the traditions of
Judaism, to bear. St. Paul did not believe that
that responsibility was his. He connects his
special work with his primary commission :
" God . . . called me by his grace . . . that
I should preach [his Son] among the nations"
(Gal. i. 16). And this element in his apostle-
ship is emphasized in each of the three accounts
of the conversion in the Acts. At the same
time, great confusion has been brought into the

74 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
history, and serious but wholly imaginary
difficulties raised, by a misapprehension of the
later compact between St. Paul and the
Apostles of the Circumcision — ¦" that we
should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the
circumcision" (Gal. ii. 9). It was a natural
agreement, laying down a general and practical
rule as to the direction of their evangelistic
work ; but it did not finally circumscribe the
limits of their activity. On neither side could
the terms of the first commission be abrogated.
The Apostles of the Circumcision could not put
aside the command " to make disciples of all
the nations" (Matt, xxviii. 19). St. Paul would
be little likely to forget that he was a messenger
of the Messiah to Israel. No one can read the
Epistle to the Romans and doubt that St. Paul
reckoned himself as entrusted with a gospel to
his own people.
With an emphatic and solemn notice of the
peace and growth of the Church in Palestine
which ensued after the conversion of Saul of
Tarsus, the second division of the Acts comes
to a close (ix. 31).

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 75
The third division of the Book opens with
one of those simple commonplace phrases with
which St. Luke sometimes hints at an im
portant background of history: "And it came
to pass, as Peter went throughout all parts, he
came down also to the saints which dwelt at
Lydda" (ix. 32). Hitherto the Apostles have
always been represented as working and acting
together. When the storm of persecution burst
upon the Church, "all" the disciples "were
scattered abroad . . . except the apostles "
(viii. 1). When news came to Jerusalem of
the evangelization of Samaria, the Apostles
took common action, and, following the rule of
Christ (Mark vi. 7 ; Luke x. 1), they sent to the
new converts two of their number — those very
two who, we have reason to think,1 had been
companions in the first mission to Israel. Thus
the apostolic visit to the earliest outpost of the
Church was ruled by precedent ; there was as yet
no breaking with the past. Now all is changed.
St. Peter, unaccompanied by any other of the
Apostles, leaves Jerusalem, and makes a pro-
1 See the article on Peter (Simon) in Hastings' Dictionary of the
Bible, iii. p. 758.

76 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
tracted journey, sojourning at Lydda, at Joppa,
and at Cssarea. Does not St. Luke mean us
to understand that now — some six years ap^
parently after the Ascension — the Apostolic
College was broken up ? The time for tarry
ing at Jerusalem was now over. If the perils
of persecution had lately kept the Twelve in the
Holy City, now the return of peace justified
their departure. The Christian Dispersion
needed their presence and their guidance.
Henceforth there is no sign that Jerusalem was
ever again their settled home. St. Luke's
significant statement at this point about St.
Peter prepares us for an equally incidental
notice later on. From the Apostle's words at
the house of Mary — " Tell these things unto
James, and to the brethren " (xii. 17) — we infer
(comparing later passages) that, before Herod's
attack upon the Church, the presidency of the
Church at the Holy City had passed from the
Apostolic body as a whole into the hands of the
elders, with St. James as their head.
The historian now follows the movements
of St. Peter. Though no Apostle was with him,
we learn (x. 45, xi. 12) that he had companions,

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 77
strict Jews, among whom we may conjecture
with great probability that John Mark, after
wards known in the Church as "the inter
preter of Peter," had a place. At length St.
Peter settles for some time "in Joppa, with
one Simon a tanner." The place is doubly
significant. The trade of a tanner was con
sidered among the Jews as unclean.1 Is then
the choice of this house as a lodging a sign
that the Apostle's Jewish prejudices were be
coming weaker? On the other hand, Joppa
was a half- Gentile city. The authorities at
Jerusalem, it is said, laid its produce under a
ban as defiled by contact with heathenism, and
as unfit for use at the sacred festivals. Simon
Maccabaeus, when " he took Joppa for a haven,
made it an entrance for the isles of the sea "
(1 Mace. xiv. 5). The position then of the
place looking over the waters of the Mediter
ranean, and its mixed population, could hardly
fail to bring home to the mind of the Apostle
questionings as to "those who were afar off."
1 See Schoettgen and Wetstein on Acts ix. 43. As to Joppa see
Mr. G. M. Mackie's article on Joppa in Hastings' Dictionary of the
Bible, ii. p. 755 ; Prof. G. A. Smith, Historical Geography of the Holy
Land, p. 138.

78 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Thus he was prepared for the thrice-repeated
vision with its divinely-given interpretation, and
for the monition of the Spirit bidding him go
with the messengers of the Roman soldier,
" nothing doubting."
The vision itself is worth a moment's
notice. It springs from the present and from
St. Peter's immediate surroundings. Doubtless
in the market at Joppa questions had to be
asked, familiar enough to a Jew of the Dis
persion, but strange and repulsive to an un-
travelled Hebrew. There are in the vision
echoes of passages in the Old Testament on
which St. Peter may well have been led by his
circumstances to meditate. Lastly, it has all
the weird, strange surprises of a dream. The
Apostle on the house-top, gazing over the
waters, sees a sail — a recognized meaning of
bdovr) in later Greek — outlined against the sky.
The next moment it is no longer gliding over
the waters, but coming down from heaven.
Suddenly the sail is transformed into a kind of
ark, in which some of all living creatures are
gathered, clean and unclean (comp. Gen. vii.
2, 8). The divine voice recalls the permission,

II THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 79
" Notwithstanding thou may est kill and eat
flesh within all thy gates" (Deut. xii. 15).
The remonstrance of the Apostle is a reminis
cence of the bitter complaint of Ezekiel when
he too was confronted with the command from
heaven to eat loathsome bread — "Ah Lord
God ! behold, my soul hath not been polluted :
for from my youth up till now have I not
eaten of that which died of itself, or is torn of
beasts ; neither came there abominable flesh
into my mouth " (Ezek. iv. 14). In these few
verses we are listening to a man telling the
phantasmagoria of his dream.
The entrance of the leader of the Apostles
into the Roman capital of Judaea, with a
population, as Josephus tells us {B.J. 111.
ix. 1), predominantly Gentile, was in itself a
crisis in the progress of the Gospel ; and the
sequel, the descent of the Holy Ghost upon
Gentiles, made that day the Pentecost of the
Gentile world. The direct action of God re
vealed that the highest gifts of the heavenly
kingdom were within the reach of the Gentile ;
that in every nation he who seeks finds God, or
rather is found by Him, who finds only to bless.

80 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
But, strange as it seems to us, the full
meaning of this revelation of God's "philan
thropy," to use St. Paul's (Titus iii. 4) pregnant
word — God's love for man as man — was not
as yet discerned. The Apostle's action, indeed,
was on his explanation approved by the Church
at Jerusalem. But the words in which St.
Luke records their final verdict — " Then to the
Gentiles also hath God granted repentance
unto life" (xi. 18) — are rather a half-grudging
acquiescence in what could not be gainsaid —
it is the repentance of these " sinners of the
Gentiles" which is prominent in their thoughts —
than an expression of missionary zeal and joy.
The scales of religious exclusiveness do not fall
from their eyes. The disciples are content to
allow the conversion of Cornelius to remain an
isolated overflow of the divine favour. A great
and good cause, if it subverts inherited associ
ations and uproots inbred habits of thought,
moves onward with a slow and hesitating de
liberation infinitely sad in the eyes of men who
cannot in the beginning see the end of hope.
This history closes the ministry of St.
Peter as narrated in the Acts. He appears

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 8 1
again in the Book in connexion with his im
prisonment, and once more at the conclave in
Jerusalem. But " the acts of Peter " cease
just before the work of St. Paul begins.
Doubtless St. Luke knew more of St. Peter's
ministry ; and had he meant a biographical
interest to dominate his book he would surely
have told us more. But his subject is the
expansion of the Church ; and St. Peter, in the
admission, under divine guidance, of typical
Gentiles into the Church, reached the limits
of his characteristic work in the kingdom of
God. From the Roman capital of Palestine the
history takes us to the Syrian Antioch — a great
city of commerce and of pleasure, a meeting-
place of all classes of Greeks and Romans and
Syrians, and one of the chief centres of the
Jewish Dispersion. It was soon to become the
mother city of Gentile Christendom.
Was the Church at Antioch a Gentile
Church from the first? The question is sug
gested by a well-known difficulty of reading.
It is the only question of textual criticism with

82 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
which I shall trouble you. The historian tells
us that those who were scattered abroad went
northwards along the coast - line as far as
Phoenicia and Antioch, " speaking the word to
none save only to Jews" (xi. 19). 1 The last
clause is added to distinguish the scope of their
work from that of St. Peter's mission to
Caesarea, with which the previous section had
dealt. " And there were some of them," St.
Luke continues, "men of Cyprus and Cyrene,
who, when they were come to Antioch, spake
also unto the Grecian Jews or Greeks," -n-po? tovs
' EiWr]vicrTd<; or 7rpb<s Tot"? "EWrjvas — Which of
these two words ('Exx^^to-Ta?, "EXKyvas) came
from St. Luke's pen ? It is, I fancy, becoming
rather the fashion to think that here, at any rate,
plain common sense gains an open and decisive
victory over its pedantic foe, the esoteric
principle of scrupulous fidelity to the best
critical authorities. The more highly supported
reading is 'EXX^z/to-Ta? (Grecian Jews) ; common
sense clamours for the reading "EXX^m? (Greeks,
1 The passage runs thus : ol fiiv oBk Siaawapivres . . . hrjKBov . . .
fitlSevl XaXouvres rbv X6701' el /it) \xhvov 'lovdatois. "Hcrac 84 fives ii air&v
avSpes Ktiwpioi Kal Kvprivatoi, o'inves i\86t>Tes els 'Avriixeiav 4\d\ow Kal
1rp6s rois 'EWriVKTrdt (v. I, "EXXtiuas).

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 83
Gentiles) as obviously necessary. The fact,
however, is apt to be overlooked that the read
ing "EXX^i/a? (Greeks) makes the historian con
tradict himself. The evangelists in question
were, he tells us, some of those whom he has
just described as " speaking the word to none
save only to Jews." The verdict of the context
then is the same as the verdict of the scrupulous
textual critic. St. Luke, we conclude, wrote
'EXX^iwTa?. But the km — "unto the Grecian
Jews also " — seems still a persistent witness
whose protest against the verdict of the author
and of the textual critic refuses to be silenced.
The solution of the problem, I venture to
think, is a simple one. Has not a single word
here, as in some other passages of the Acts,
either dropped out in that very early copy
which was the archetype of all known texts, or
(more probably) been omitted by the author
himself? It is a habit of St. Luke to
repeat a phrase (with or without some slight
variation) which he has used already in a
similar context. Did he not write, or intend
to write, here, just as he wrote in ix. 29,
e\a\ovv Kal crvve^TOW 7T|0o? tovs 'EXX^i'trTTa?

84 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
("they spake and disputed with the Grecian
Jews ") ? 1
It was then simply the extraordinary success
to which these teachers attained at Antioch, the
third city of the Roman Empire, as Josephus
{B.J. in. ii. 4) accounted it, which attracted
the attention of the Church at Jerusalem and
led the authorities there to send Barnabas. At
Antioch the Gospel was first offered to the
Jews. The Church there in its earliest period
was still a Judaic Church.
Two matters of interest for our purpose are
noted here by St. Luke. Saul of Tarsus,
whose powers as an evangelist to the Jews
had been already proved at Damascus, at
Jerusalem, and doubtless in his native city, is
brought by Barnabas to Antioch.. And in the
second place we learn now for the first time
that "the disciples " attracted the notice of their
heathen neighbours. The keen wit of the
Antiochenes fastened on them the nickname
Christians. It is often urged on somewhat
vague grounds that the name can hardly have
1 Comp. ix. 29, A<£Xei re xal avve£iyrei wpbs robs 'EWrivurTds ; xviii.
25, eXaXei Kal iSLdaffKev ; Luke xxiv. 15) ^v Tt? ofiiKelv afiroi/s Kal
trvvfareiv.

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 85
become current at so early a date as St. Luke
here asserts. But indeed does not the name
itself bear witness to its early origin ? It would
most naturally attach itself to the followers of
Jesus while they were still commonly regarded
as a peculiarly extravagant class of Jews. It is
to be specially noted that St. Luke does not say
that the name Christian was now invented, but
that it was now first borne by the disciples. It
is probable that it already had been occasionally,
and in different places, used of the Jews. What
more natural than that it should have arisen,
for example, at Rome, at one of those crises
such as that of which Suetonius {Claud. 25)
tells us, when there were frequent risings of the
Jews at the capital impulsore Chresto ? The
Antiochenes had heard their Jewish neighbours
speak of their Chrislus ; sometimes their enthu
siasm about the name had been fanned into a
flame. But these new-comers, and those who
gathered round them, could think and speak of
nothing and of no one else. If other Jews were
partisans of Christus, these were certainly the
most devoted, the most outrageous, of his
adherents. So in the busy streets and in the

86 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
market-place the jest passed from mouth to
mouth, until the nickname became the exclusive
possession of the rising sect.
But to resume the history of the Church's
expansion : — After a not uneventful interval
of more than a year (xi. 26), in a solemn
assembly for worship, the will of the Spirit was
revealed (xiii. 2), probably through one of the
prophets, that Barnabas and Saul should be set
apart " for the work whereunto I have called
them." They are sent forth as the envoys of
the Church at Antioch. The special character
istic of " the work " still remained undefined.
Events, however, were so ordered that the
evangelists did not long remain in doubt. The
Proconsul of Cyprus (whither, as the home of
Barnabas, they first went) was, like H adrian ( Tert.
Apol. 5), " curiositatum omnium explorator."
He had been lately amusing himself with a Jewish
magician who hung about his court. When
he heard of some fresh arrivals, adherents
of some new phase of the Jewish superstition,
his interest was aroused. He sent for them
and questioned them. Saul at once takes the

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 87
lead, and Sergius Paulus becomes the first-fruits
of the great harvest which he was destined to
reap from the Gentile world. St. Luke does not
stop to emphasize the significance of the con
version of the Roman magistrate. After his
manner, he hints at it by recording two facts.
Henceforth the Apostle is known by his Roman
name. Henceforth he takes the first place ; the
band of missionaries becomes at once " Paul and
his company" (xiii. 13).
From Cyprus the missionaries cross to the
mainland and travel inland as far as Perga.
Here John Mark "departed from them and
returned to Jerusalem " (xiii. 1 3). St. Mark is
one of those minor characters in the Apostolic
Church whose movements throw considerable
light on the history.1 We ask then — Why did
he, just at this point, having followed them
from Cyprus, desert his leaders ? Chiefly, we
seem to be led to suppose, because at Perga
the missionaries took counsel together, and (in
the light of recent events) shaped anew their
evangelistic policy.
1 See the article on Mark (John) in Hastings' Dictionary of the
Bible, iii. pp. 245 f.

88 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
St. Paul must all along have been conscious
that his apostolate extended to the Gentiles.
At Antioch, when the Gentiles began to take
a scornful interest in the believers, the question
of his duty towards them could not have been
far from his thoughts. The events in Cyprus
shewed that the time had already come when
he should go "far hence unto the Gentiles."
It was determined therefore that the little band
should cross the Taurus and enter the vast
district of Asia Minor, as yet, it would seem,
virgin soil to the Christian evangelist. Here
an opportunity of work among the Gentiles
would be sure soon to offer itself. For these
new conditions of service St. Mark, who was,
as many indications lead us to think, a strict
Hebrew Christian, was not prepared. He had
continued with Paul and Barnabas till their
resolve was finally taken ; now he withdrew.
It was at Perga then, if I mistake not, that
the momentous decision was arrived at. What
had hitherto been St. Paul's ideal and ambition
— it could not be otherwise with his wonderful
conversion printed in his memory — was now
to become his daily task, " to preach unto the

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 89
Gentiles the unsearchable riches of the Messiah"
(Eph. iii. 8). The old things of a purely Judaic
ministry passed away ; they were transfigured
into a catholic apostolate.
Soon the looked-for opportunity came. At
Antioch in Pisidia the eager attention of the
Gentiles, who, on two Sabbath days, found their
way into the synagogue, and, on the other
hand, the envy and blasphemy of the Jews,
meant a welcome of the Gospel on the one side,
and a rejection of the Gospel on the other.
The decisive words were now for the first time
spoken — what they must have cost St. Paul
the Epistle to the Romans reveals — " Seeing
... ye judge yourselves unworthy of eternal
life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles" (xiii. 46).
And, shewing that this decisive step had been
foreseen and well pondered over, the Apostle
adds proof that his action was but a fulfilment
of an ancient prophetic declaration.
The issue of St. Paul's work at Antioch was
the type of its issue elsewhere. In the towns
which they visited in that southern corner of
the province of Galatia, the missionaries were
cheered by wonderful success. But their

90 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
success was not among Jews but among
Gentiles. And when at length they returned
to the great Syrian Church which had sent
them out, the missionaries sum up the report of
their work in the words : " God [hath] opened
a door of faith unto the Gentiles " (xiv. 27).
The extension of the Church to the Gentiles
was now assured. The position of the Gentiles
in the Church became at once a pressing
question. It was naturally in Antioch that it
came to the front. There the missionaries
remained "no little time." Possibly before
they returned, their example of speaking the
word to Gentiles had found imitators at Antioch.
Whether this was so or not, certainly after their
return a Gentile Church rapidly developed.
It at once attracted the attention of " certain
men" who "came down from Judaea" (xv. 1).
To them the matter presented no difficulty at
all. They gave their views with no uncertain
sound : " Except ye be circumcised after the
custom of Moses, ye cannot be saved."
With these words we are brought to the
great controversy of the Apostolic age. One
party demanded that a Gentile to become a

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS gr
Christian must become a Jew. St. Paul main
tained that every man is in the fullest sense a
potential member of the Christian Church. Let
us stop to remark that no one in the age of the
Apostles ever thought of proposing the solution
which would find favour in our days. It was
never once remotely suggested that there should
be in Antioch, or anywhere else, two Churches
— the Church of the Jew and the Church of the
Gentile — two societies independent of each
other but loosely allied, worshipping the same
Lord but never worshipping Him together.
And yet the line of cleavage was clear, deep,
natural, drawn by the Creator Himself. In
Apostolic days the conception of many bodies
of the one Lord was unknown. The unity of
the Church was an axiom about which both
sides were in absolute agreement.
Two main points in connexion with this
controversy claim our attention.
i. What is the relation between the history
of this crisis given in the Acts and St. Paul's
reference to it in the Epistle to the Galatians ?
That there are differences in substance and
in tone between the two accounts cannot be

92 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
denied. Are the variations natural and consist
ent with substantial truthfulness ? I submit
that they are fully accounted for by three
considerations. (a) Take the most obvious first. St. Luke
was a Gentile (Col. iv. 1 1, 14). He was essenti
ally unable to enter fully into the inwardness of
the conflict. He would regard as an outsider
the intense emotion which a call in any sense to
surrender the Law awoke in a religious Jew, and,
on the other hand, the passion of St. Paul's
conviction that this surrender was rightful and
necessary — a passion proportionate in strength
to his own deep personal attachment to the
religion of his fathers. An outsider finds no
difficulty in writing a calm summary of a
dispute. (/3) The history was written long after the
controversy had passed away. To drag out
again into the daylight all the mistakes and
heartburnings of the time, if indeed St. Luke
knew them, would have been a useless outrage ;
and he was not guilty of it. The practice
nowadays is, when the dead past has decently
buried its dead, resolutely to disinter the corpse,

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 93
and to write a disquisition on the dissector's dis
coveries. The reticence of the Acts is not an
argument against its veracity. It is an example
to be followed. The tomb of dead controver
sies ought to be an inviolable resting-place.
(7) There is a whole world of difference
between the Acts, written as, according to our
working hypothesis, we assume it to have been
written, and the Epistle of St. Paul, the chief
actor in the controversy, written some five
years after the crisis itself, and when that crisis
in Syria was being reproduced in Galatia by
the machinations of Jewish emissaries.
2. We turn in the second place to the ques
tion — a crucial question in regard to the his
torical character of the Acts — of the genuine
ness of the letter of the " Council " of Jerusalem
in Acts xv. It is part of our assumption as to
the authorship of the Book that the writer
became known to St. James and to the
authorities at Jerusalem as the companion of
St. Paul, and that consequently he could not
but have had ready access to the archives
(if that be not too ambitious a word) of the
Church at Jerusalem. Does the letter, when

94 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
we examine it carefully, confirm our assump
tion ? The discussion must be condensed.
(a) Notice the form of the letter. It is
essentially a commendatory letter. It warmly
recognizes " Barnabas and Paul " (note the older
order of names), and it accredits two other men
as having authority to explain to the Church at
Antioch the decision of the Church at Jerusa
lem. In form then the letter was very probably
modelled on those letters which were constantly
being sent from the Sanhedrin and the High
Priest to the Synagogues of the Dispersion —
letters such as Saul of Tarsus took from the
High Priest "to the brethren [note the word]
at Damascus " (ix. 2, xxii. 5; comp. xxviii. 21).
This view of the letter is strengthened by the
opening words : " The apostles and elders,
brethren to the brethren in Antioch, Syria, and
Cilicia." The salutation in the letter with which
the Second Book of the Maccabees opens, and
which purports to be addressed by the Pales
tinian to the Egyptian Jews, is in this double
emphasis on the word brethren precisely
parallel : " The brethren, the Jews that are in
Jerusalem . . , send greeting to the brethren,

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 95
the Jews that are throughout Egypt " (comp.
KX97T09 . . . K\rjTol$ 1 Cor. i. 1 f, Rom. i. i, 7).
The letter then in Acts xv. is clearly a Jewish
letter, probably drawn up after the form of a
synagogue letter.
(/3) Notice the omissions and the silences of
the letter. There is no explicit statement as to
the matter in dispute. The words " circum
cision," "law," "the custom of Moses," do not
occur in it. The details are left to the oral
communications of the delegates. And further,
only two phrases (one quite incidental) betray
the Christian authorship of the document. On
matters of Christian doctrine the letter (like
the Epistle of St. James) is silent. Such self-
repression as this is absolutely incredible in a
Pauline Christian composing a fictitious letter
for a fictitious history.
(7) Notice the so-called restrictive clauses :
" that ye abstain from things sacrificed to idols,
and from blood, and from things strangled, and
from fornication " (xv. 29). Of the common ex
planations of these words, even of that suggested
By Dr. Hort {Judaistic Christianity, pp. 68 ff.),
it must suffice bluntly to say that they fail in

96 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
two respects : they do not justify the phrase
" these necessary things " ; they do not distin
guish between " blood" and "things strangled."
The true interpretation, as I venture to think,
was substantially given long ago by a Cam
bridge scholar of the seventeenth century,
Dean Spencer, in his De Legibus Hebraeorum}
It is hinted at and receives, in fact, abundant
illustration in the works of ah adopted son of
Cambridge, never to be mentioned without
reverence, Professor Robertson Smith.2 All
four words alike refer to rites and accompani
ments of idolatrous worship. The first and the
last need no comment. The word "things
offered to idols," standing at the head of the
clause, rules the meaning of the two terms,
"blood" and "things strangled," which follow.
They both refer to rites current among heathen
Semites — "blood" possibly to the "rite of
1 Lib. ii., Dissertatio in locum ilium vexatissimum, Actorum xv.
20. This remarkable book, which "may justly be said to have laid
the foundations of the science of Comparative Religion " (Robertson
Smith, The Religion of the Semites, preface, p. vi.), was published
in 1683. Spencer was Master of Corpus, 1667- 1693; Dean of
Ely, 1677- 1693.
2 The Religion of the Semites, pp. 295 ff., 320, 324, 325 n., 361 ;
Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, p. 310. The passages in the
O.T. are Is. lxv. 4, lxvi. 3, 17, Ezek. iv. 14; comp. Zech. ix. 7.

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 97
blood-brotherhood," "still known in the Leba
non and in some parts of Arabia"; "things
strangled," to certain sacrifices referred to in
Isaiah, possibly connected with mystic initiations.
These practices are chosen for special prohibi
tion, partly because they prevailed in Syria (the
letter is addressed to churches in Antioch and
Syria), partly because they were peculiarly
abhorrent to Jewish feeling. Thus the two
parts of the decision strictly correspond. The
Jewish Christians do not lay on their Gentile
brethren "the yoke of the law." The Gentile
Christians are bidden diligently to keep them
selves from all participation in idolatrous
worship. Our brethren in Delhi could tell us —
indeed they have often told us — how fatally easy
it is for converts, surrounded by an inheritance
of debasing worship, to relapse into idolatrous
usages, bound up as these often are with social
and family life. If then these restrictive clauses
dealt with the special temptations of converts in
Syria, we have a natural explanation of the fact
that St. Paul does not refer to the letter when
answering the questions of the Corinthian
Church. On the main lesson, a scrupulous
H

98 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
avoidance of all things associated with idolatry,
he insists with reiterated emphasis. A study
of the language of the letter of the Church at
Jerusalem would take us too far into the region
of verbal comment. It is not too much to say
that such an investigation sets its seal to the
conclusion that St. Luke gives us here the
very words of the letter which the envoys of
the Church at Jerusalem took with them to
Antioch. The great controversy was now decided.
St. Paul was able, at least without overt opposi
tion, to carry out his commission and preach
to the nations "the Gospel of the grace of
God." Into the subsequent history of the
expansion of the Church in the provinces of
the Empire, Macedonia, Achaia, Asia, we
must not now enter. Nor must we trace
in the Acts and in the Epistles that com
plementary side of the Apostle's mission, so
impressively described by Dr. Hort — his efforts
"to avert a breach between the Christians of
Palestine, for whom the Law remained binding
while the Temple was still standing, and the
Gentile Christians of other lands ; to promote

ii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 99
kindly recognition on the one side, and brotherly
help on the other.1 "
We must at once hasten to the closing section
of the Book.
St. Paul at length attained his long and
deeply cherished wish, to witness for his Master
at Rome. He entered the city as " the
prisoner of Jesus Christ," his very "chain"
being a pledge that he refused to surrender
"the hope of Israel" (xxviii. 20). Once and
yet again he summons to his lodging the chief
men of the great Jewish settlement at the
capital. Through the one long memorable day
— " from morning till evening " — he reasons
with them " from the Law of Moses and from
the Prophets," "protesting to them of the
kingdom of God, and persuading them con
cerning Jesus." His failure with his fellow-
countrymen elsewhere has its counterpart in
his failure at Rome. He dismisses them
with those awful words of Isaiah, with which
St. John (xii. 39 f.) concludes his record
of the Saviour's ministry, which speak of
1 The Christian Ecclesia, p. 281 (a sermon preached at Bishop
Westcott's consecration).

ioo HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
the necessary rejection of a people wilfully
blind and wilfully deaf. As the first pages of
the Acts record the witness to Israel at Jeru
salem, so the last tells of St. Paul's final and
fruitless appeal to Israel at " the uttermost parts
of the earth."
But the divine purpose is like the cloudy
pillar of the Exodus. It must needs enfold the
unbelieving in a hopeless gloom. It gives
light to the new Israel of God. " Be it known
therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is
sent unto the Gentiles : they will also hear."
"They will hear" — it is the final word of the
Apostle of the Gentiles preserved by his friend.
It is a word full of assured hope — a prophecy of
the triumph of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus
among " all the nations:"
In the last paragraph of his book St. Luke
records the progress of the Gospel at those
"uttermost parts of the earth" of which the
Saviour spoke on the Mount of Olives. For
the two years of his imprisonment at Rome
St. Paul bore his witness to the kinp;dom
of God and to the Lord Jesus Christ
" with all boldness, none forbidding him " —

n THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 101
/MeTa, Trdar]<i irapprjala^ d/cwXvTO)?. These tWO sig
nificant phrases express the duty and the
confidence of the Missionary Church for all
time. They are a record and a prophecy.
They were true of the Apostle at Rome in the
first century. They are true of the Catholic
Church on the eve of the twentieth century.
"As for our teaching," exclaims Clement of
Alexandria {Strom, vi. 18, p. 828 ed. Potter),
echoing the trustful triumph of St. Luke's last
word, " from its first proclamation kings and
despots and rulers in divers countries, and
governors with all their armies — yea, with
men innumerable, forbid it, making war
against us, and endeavouring themselves with
all their might to cut us off. Howbeit it
blossoms the more ; it dies not, as though it
were a human teaching, nor, as though it were
a gift without strength, does it fade away ; for
no gift of God is without strength : nay, though
prophecy saith of it that it shall be persecuted
even unto the end, it abideth as that which
cannot be forbidden — jikvei a/cwXt/ro?."

LECTURE III

"AopaAcjc oun riNcocKeTco nac oTkoc 'IcpafrX 5ti Kai KiipioN
auTON Kal xP'Cton enoiHceN 6 ee6c, toOton ton 'IhcoOn on OjulcTc
^craupcicaTe.

2nd Sunday akter Epiphany,
January 20, 1901.

Ill
" Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath
made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified."
— Acts ii. 36.
To-day we approach the centre and core of the
problem, or group of problems, presented by
the Book of the Acts. We have traversed the
main road of the history of the Apostolic age —
the events of the day of Pentecost ; the expan
sion of the Church, its progress from Jerusalem
to Rome. So far as our investigation has gone,
we have seen — I speak with earnest and serious
conviction — that the record bears a manifold
testimony to its own substantial truthfulness.
The acts of the Apostles are the setting of
the words of the Apostles. The Apostles, as the
representatives of His redeemed Church, were
commissioned by the ascending Lord to be His
witnesses to all the world. Our task is now to
105

106 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
review the record of the witness which in the
power of the Spirit they rendered, and to trace
the development of Apostolic teaching from the
day of that awful glad farewell to the time
when, in the Epistles of St. Paul, a Christian
literature and a Christian theology arose.
This teaching, so far as the time at our dis
posal allows us to follow it out, is contained in
the speeches of St. Peter and of St. Paul. Next
Sunday, with the lessons of the conversion of
St. Paul fresh in our minds, we shall, please
God, review the witness of St. Paul. To-day
our subject is the witness of St. Peter.
Before we enter upon the details of this
special subject, some general points, relating to
the speeches incorporated in the Acts, demand
consideration. We are familiar with two extreme positions
which have been taken up. On the one hand
we find it assumed — and we know that when
we are not making an effort to speak with
scientific precision it is hard not to assume —
that here, though it may be in an abbreviated
form, we have the actual words which the

ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 107
Apostles spoke, and that these words are a final
expression of Christian truth. On the other
hand it is maintained that, while at least some of
the historical parts of the Book are built up on
a basis of real fact, yet the speeches, at any
rate, are the creation of the writer's imagination
— the clumsy invention of a dramatist who
makes all his characters speak alike. "The
similarities found in the speeches," says Jiilicher
{Einleitung, p. 347), "and the religious stand
point which they represent, are due simply to
the fact that Luke manufactured these utter
ances and put his own thoughts into the mouth
of both Apostles. Paul is not moulded after a
Judaistic type, nor is Peter assimilated to Paul,
but Paul and Peter alike have a Lucan, i.e. a.
catholic, character given to them."
The view to which a repeated study — I hope
an unprejudiced study — of these speeches has
led me is remote from both these extremes.
The evidence on which the verdict must be
based is of two kinds, literary and doctrinal.
It is to the latter kind of evidence that I shall
chiefly appeal in the sequel — the doctrinal
differences between the speeches, their rela-

108 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
tion to what we know of contemporary thought
and to the teaching of the Epistles. Meantime,
this broad statement of widely divergent views
may serve to bring out clearly the points at
issue. In considering the truthfulness of the record
we must be prepared to recognise two influences
which cannot but have modified the report of
these Apostolic words both in form and in
substance — the work of the editor and the
process of transmission to the editor.
{a) The writer of the Acts, if he did not
invent the discourses, yet certainly edited what
ever record of them came into his hands. He
gave the speeches their present literary form.
Of this conclusion, antecedentally probable, the
study of the language of the Apostolic addresses,
when compared with each other and with the
rest of the Book, is a sufficient proof. How far
this editing penetrated into the fabric of the
discourses is a question to which no certain
and uniform answer can be given. We have
no evidence outside the Book itself to which
we can appeal. We can only turn to the
analogous case of our Lord's words pre-

in THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 109
served to us in St. Luke's Gospel. Here in
the parallels supplied by the other Synoptists
we have an external standard to guide and
control our judgment. An examination of
typical passages in St. Luke, where the agree
ment of St. Mark and St. Matthew enables us
to form an approximately accurate idea of the
"source," seems to shew that St. Luke was
wont to deal somewhat freely with his materials.
Sometimes he rewrites and expands ; see, for
example, the parable of the strong man
armed (xi. 21 f). At other times he adds a
word or a phrase to bring a latent idea into
clearer relief, e.g. the treading under foot of the
seed by the wayside (viii. 5), or the rending of
the new garment (v. 36). Or again, he in
terprets or replaces the words of the "source"
with phrases characteristic of his own style or
derived from the LXX., or which belong to the
category of medical terms. He changes simple
into compound words ; he introduces phrases
of a more elaborate and ornate type. Thus the
editing work of St. Luke, speaking generally,
gives to his record of " the Oracles of the
Lord " a somewhat greater fulness and elabora-

no HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
tion and a more distinctly literary flavour and
finish. At the same time he is faithful to the
original ideas ; he does riot build upon the
foundation of his " source " a superstructure of
teaching of his own. It is a fact of deep
significance — a fact which warns us and braces
us — that seldom can we assert about a saying
of the Saviour, " This is the exact equivalent
of the very words which came from His lips."
Here we live by faith. Here it is the spirit,
not the letter, which trains us in the wisdom
He came to teach. Here we have need of
patience. And if this is the case with the
sayings of the Master Himself, we cannot
expect it to be otherwise with the sayings of
the disciples. For — to return to our immediate
subject — certainly the Evangelist, who changed
in form and to some extent in substance the
tradition of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ,
would not hesitate to mould and shape the
report, however it came to him, of the words
of the Apostles.
{b) But how did the report come to him ?
Again we must confess that no certain or
uniform answer can be given to this question.

in THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS in
At some of the speeches (if our working
hypothesis as to the writer of the Book is
correct) St. Luke was himself present —
probably, that is, at the speeches after St.
Paul's apprehension at Jerusalem, and certainly
at St. Paul's address to the Elders of Ephesus.
And in regard to these speeches (with the
exception of that apologia of St. Paul which
was occasioned by the sudden tumult in the
Temple) another possibility must be borne in
mind. If we examine the speech of the
advocate Tertullus (xxi v. 2 ff.) we are struck by
the fact that the complementary phrases of the
exordium are evidently preserved with some
exactness, but that, when the main subject of
the speech {i.e. the history of St. Paul's case)
is reached, the grammatical construction of the
sentence is lost in three curt, stunt, relative
clauses. To what does this phenomenon
point ? Any one who has taken notes of a
lecture or a speech knows that at first he is
anxious and alert to set down the exact words
used ; but that after a time, especially if the
speaker gets on familiar ground, the effort is
relaxed, and he is content with jotting down brief

112 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
and disjointed notes of what he hears. We
know that some kind of shorthand-writing was
practised among the ancients x ; and I venture to
suggest that it is probable that in the case of
the speeches contained in the closing chapters
of the Acts we have, more or less edited and
elaborated, a transcript of notes taken of them
at the time, it may well be by St. Luke himself.
It is far from impossible that in the same way
the speech at Miletus was preserved. It was
delivered on an occasion deliberately arranged
beforehand — "And from Miletus he sent to
Ephesus, and called to him the elders of the
church" (xx. 17). It belongs to a period long
after St. Paul, as we learn from the Epistle to
the Romans, was regarded as speaking with a
widely recognised authority. It was a farewell
utterance of peculiar solemnity and lasting
significance. Clearly there would be special
reasons for preserving a permanent record of
St. Paul's words, for the sake both of his
1 See the article Nota in Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities. Galen (xix. p. u, ed. Ktihn) mentions the fact that the
medical students who attended his lectures took them down (di>Hypa<pa
fieipaKims vwayopevdivruv dpxofievois pavBdvein). It is by no means
impossible that St. Luke acquired the power of shorthand-writing in
connexion with his training in medicine.

ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 113
immediate hearers and of the great Church
of Ephesus, so long the Apostle's home, of
which the Elders were the representatives.
If the suggestion that some of the speeches
preserved in the Acts are based on something
analogous to shorthand reports has a peculiarly
modern sound and seems to antedate the journal
istic methods of our own days, this impression
is due, I think, to our somewhat supercilious
forgetfulness that, in regard to those accessories
and embellishments of life which are not the
outcome of strictly scientific knowledge, ancient
civilisation was not so very far behind our own.
Most of the speeches in the Acts, however,
were called forth by the sudden exigencies of
the moment. Their interest and importance
would not be perceived till afterwards. To
them the theory which I have just advanced
will not apply. How then can we explain their
preservation ? How far do they differ, or do
they differ at all, from those political speeches
of which Thucydides in a well-known passage
(i. 22) says that his informants found it hard
to give him anything of an exact report?
Directly we ask these questions we are con-
1

ii4 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
scious that we are confronted by another. In
what language were the speeches of St. Peter
originally delivered ? There can be no ques
tion that those addressed to the Jews of
Jerusalem were, like St. Paul's speech on the
steps of the Castle, spoken in Aramaic. Con
sequently here, as in the case of our Lord's
discourses, we must make allowance for changes
necessarily caused by translation more or less
free. But the case is not so clear with the
speeches of St. Peter at the house of Cornelius
and on the day of Pentecost. On the one
hand, in reference to the latter it cannot be
disputed that Greek was the only language
which would be generally intelligible to Jews
gathered from all parts of the Dispersion.
They could not have been deeply stirred by a
preacher speaking to them in a language of
which they only knew a few words. But, on
the other hand, can we suppose that St. Peter
was able to deliver a connected speech in
intelligible Greek? The question, I need not
tell you, is in reality a complicated one, and the
evidence slighter and less decisive than we
could wish. I can but with the utmost brevity

ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 115
suggest what appear to me the important
considerations.1 In Galilee then, with its Greek towns like
Gadara and with a mixed population which
trade had brought together, Greek must have
been to a large extent the language of business.
And further, if in Jerusalem, then surely in the
commercial towns of Galilee, there must have
been Hellenistic synagogues frequented by Jews
who had come from the Dispersion, where the
Discourse, which followed the Lessons from
the Law and the Prophets, would be in Greek.
It is unlikely, then, to say the least, that, when
St. Peter was called to follow Christ, he was
wholly ignorant of colloquial Greek. Again,
passing with his Master from place to place in
Galilee the Apostle would be thrown with
Greek-speaking people to a greater degree
than he would have been had he remained in
his home on the Lake, while the visits to
Jerusalem at the time of the feasts would
almost certainly bring him into contact with
Jews of the Dispersion. Nor does it seem by
1 Compare the article on Peter (Simon) in Hastings' Dictionary of
the Bible, iii. p. 757, and the article on Peter, First Epistle, ib. iii.
p. 787.

n6 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
any means impossible that a Palestinian Jew
would be acquainted with the LXX. That
version must have been in use in the Hellenistic
synagogues of Jerusalem and of Galilee,1 and
some knowledge of it could hardly but spread
to their Hebrew neighbours. Further, when
we consider the use of the LXX. in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, — an epistle addressed in all
probability to a strictly Jewish Church in or
near Jerusalem, — and the familiarity with the
language of the LXX. shewn in the Epistle
of St. James, a strict Jew whose home was in
Jerusalem, it is not an extravagant supposition
that some parts at least of the great Greek
version were known to St. Peter when he began
his apostolic ministry at Jerusalem. There is
then much to be said in favour of the view that
the Apostle spoke to the crowds on the day of
Pentecost in Greek. In the other scale, how
ever, must be placed the clear and precise
evidence that the Apostle at a later time
took St. Mark to be his companion in his
journeys and his interpreter. Such a notice
1 Compare Swete, An Introduction to the Old Testament in Greek,
p. 29.

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 117
certainly implies that St. Peter, at least in the
earliest days of the Gospel, could not speak
fluently and connectedly in Greek. I confess
that, when I try to harmonize the different lines
of evidence and to realize the scene in the
courts of the Temple, I am inclined to hazard
the conjecture that the apostolic utterance was
less of a set continuous speech than St. Luke's
account would at first sight lead us to suppose ;
that, as in the case of our Lord's discourses,
something of dialogue was mingled with the
address ; that possibly Aramaic and Greek
were both used, as the Apostle turned from this
group among his hearers to that ; and that
questions and answers gave opportunity for
explanation and interpretation.
But whatever was the language in which St.
Peter spoke, and whatever the exact form of
this earliest Christian sermon, how can we
reasonably suppose that it and the other speeches
at Jerusalem were preserved ? Common ex
perience tells us how much a man recalls of the
matter and of the actual language of a conversa
tion or of a sermon which has deeply and per
manently influenced him. They are wrought

118 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
into the fabric of his mind. This is so even in
the hurry of modern European life ; much more
so with the meditative minds of the East.
And further, if many persons have been
influenced by the same words of the same
speaker, and in consequence have adopted a
new fashion of life, their sympathy in their
common cause will inevitably lead them to
speak together of what was the occasion of their
great resolve, and thus a common memory will
fashion itself into a common tradition. Nor is
this all. The truths proclaimed by St. Peter in
his sermons in the Temple became at once the
subject of the "apostles' teaching," in which
the brethren " continued steadfast " (ii. 42).
The witness of the Old Testament to the
suffering and exalted Messiah and to the
promise of the Holy Spirit would be em
phasized again and again in the oral instruc
tion given to the disciples. The great facts of
Christ's life, which on the day of their regenera
tion had laid so powerful a hold on their hearts
and consciences, would be affirmed and re
affirmed. And this instruction would be given
and received by men who were penetrated by

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 119
the Messianic hope, and who recognised in
their new faith a fresh consecration of the
language in which that hope found expres
sion. And here we must notice a fact of
far-reaching import. From the day of Pente
cost onwards there must have existed in the
Church of Jerusalem two classes of converts —
Hebrews and Hellenists. The instruction
given to the former in Aramaic would among
the latter assume a Greek dress, and thus there
would grow up a Greek tradition of what St.
Peter said in his memorable utterances ; and.
this Greek tradition, we may reasonably con
jecture, was the basis of St. Luke's record of
his words. Thus, to sum up, through the later
instruction based upon them, the original
Apostolic utterances become a permanent
possession, while at the same time the form in
which they were remembered could not but to
some extent be moulded and shaped by the
very process whereby they were imprinted
upon the memory of the disciples.
Two other possible factors in the preservation
in their present form of the speeches of St.
Peter must not be forgotten.

120 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
In the first place, St. Luke refers in the
Preface to earlier written narratives. In
considering how the Apostolic words were
handed down, we must take into account the
presence among the earliest disciples of Joseph
of Arimathsea, Nicodemus, Barnabas, and of
others like them. Even from the point of
view of the Sanhedrin such men could not be
accounted as "unlearned and ignorant." Some
of these may well have preserved in writing
some record of St. Peter's witness to the Lord.
In the second place, it is even more important
that we should remind ourselves of the evidence
which we have as to St. Luke's personal
communication with the speakers themselves.
It is hard to suppose that the Evangelist
wrote down his report of St. Paul's words
at Antioch, Lystra, Athens, and Miletus, with
out reference to the Apostle himself. That
St. Paul was his one and only authority for
these speeches is an obvious conjecture which,
th'e more we study the speeches in connexion
with the Pauline Epistles, the more we are
inclined to regard as natural and adequate.
But the case is less obvious in reference to

in THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 121
St. Peter. The student of St. Peter's speeches
in the Acts, and of his Epistle to the Churches
of Asia Minor, cannot fail to notice parallels
between the reported and the written words of
the Apostle. It is not now possible to discuss
these similarities in detail, and I have no wish
to lay overmuch stress on them. But there is
one coincidence in expression and thought too
remarkable to pass over. In the Epistle and in
one of the speeches, Christ, who with the Father
is the object of man's faith or faithfulness, is
described as the channel of its bestowal — -r)
7rto-Tt? v oV avrov (Acts iii. 16), roti? St' avTov
wiaTovs eh deov { 1 Peter i. 21). We may well
hesitate to build an imposing edifice of inference
on a slight foundation ; but I confess that this
parallel between the two documents, taken in
connexion with the others to which I have
alluded, suggests that St. Luke's authority
for, or St. Luke's own version of, the Petrine
speeches passed through St. Peter's hands,
and that some touches in them are due to him.
We have already seen (pp. 22 ff.) that there
is a strong probability that St. Luke met St.
Peter at Rome.

122 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
So far then we have seen that a reasonable
account can be given of the preservation of
the Apostolic speeches contained in the Acts ;
but that, on the other hand, we must be pre
pared to allow that the original utterances have
been modified by translation (in some cases),
by the process of transmission, by the moulding
hand of the writer of the Book.
We pass at once to the Petrine speeches
themselves — the speech on the day of Pente
cost ("Jesus the Nazarene, the enthroned
Messiah ") ; the speech in Solomon's Portico
("Jesus, the glorified Servant, the Restorer") ;
the witness on two occasions before the.
Sanhedrin ("Jesus, rejected by the rulers,
raised by God to be the Saviour ") ; the speech
in the house of Cornelius ("Jesus, the Lord
of all ").
I. Pausing for a moment on the threshold of
the doctrinal teaching of these speeches, notice
how consistently Judaic is their setting. Thus
take the phrases of appeal — "Israelites, hear
these words," and the like. They belong to a
type of phrase very familiar to a devout Jew,

Ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 123
through the opening words of the Shema,
" Hear, O Israel." Again, note the forms of
address — avSpes 'IcrparjXeiTai, avSpes dSe\(f)ot,, viol
yevovs 'Afipadfj, (to quote one phrase from St.
Paul's synagogue address), — all these, I believe,
are instances of the homiletic formulas of the
synagogue. They have their counterparts in
the so-called Fourth Book of the Maccabees —
"almost the solitary example," as Ewald says
{History, v. p. 485, Eng. trans.), "of a Jewish
sermon." This book, I may note in passing,
contains (viii. 19) the one instance outside the
Acts, so far as my search has gone, of the
familiar phrase avSpes dSeX$oi — a phrase so
simple and apparently uninteresting, but in
reality exemplifying that union of Jewish
thought and Greek expression which was
characteristic of the Dispersion. Further
illustration would, I believe, confirm the verdict
that in these phrases of appeal and of address we
have echoes from the Hellenistic synagogues.
Or, to take instances of a somewhat different
kind, the phrase "the whole house of Israel,"
used with marked significance once in the
Acts (ii. 36), and found nowhere else in the

124 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
New Testament, is not infrequent in Jewish
prayers ; it occurs three times in the Kaddish.
Again, the opening words of St. Peter's second
speech, " The God of Abraham, and of Isaac,
and of Jacob, the God of our fathers" (iii. 13),
is the solemn formula with which the first of
the Eighteen Benedictions begins. Again, the
expression "sons of the covenant" (iii. 25),
in the same speech, occurs in the Psalms of
Solomon (xvii. 17; cf. Ezek. xxx. 5), and is
analogous to the phrase " a son of the law,"
which meets us, apparently for the first time,
in the Apocalypse of Baruch (xlvi. 4).
These and similar expressions have, if I mis
take not, an interest and a meaning deeper than
those which belong to mere linguistic curiosities.
They are relics of a phase of Jewish life of
which comparatively few traces now remain.
Certainly a writer evolving these speeches out
of his own imagination, when the gulf which
separated the Synagogue from the Church was
wide and was daily growing wider, would not
have been likely to introduce them so freely
and so naturally. They carry us back, I be
lieve, beyond the editing work of the Gentile

ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 125
Evangelist to the Hellenistic version or tradi
tion of the speeches, which, as we saw reason
to think, St. Luke used as his authority.
The consideration of these links between
the Acts and Jewish life brings us to a much
more important subject — the conception of the
Person and Work of our Lord found in the
Petrine speeches of the Acts. I n these speeches,
if they are substantially genuine, we have the
meeting of the streams. The one has long flowed
through the soil of human history ; the other
has but just welled forth from the pure fountain.
The one is the Jewish doctrine of the Messiah ;
the other the redemptive work of Jesus Christ,
now complete. Do these speeches answer to
their alleged unique position in the history of
religious thought ?
What was the Messianic hope then current ?
The question can here be answered only in
outline ; but for clearness some answer, how
ever brief, is necessary.
The group of national and religious aspira
tions and beliefs which are included under the
term the Messianic hope, as far as we are now-
concerned with them, became active during the

126 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
last century and a half before the birth of
Christ. The foundation of this superstructure
was laid in the Old Testament portraiture of
the three closely-related actors (if I may use
the term in this connexion) in the drama of
Israel's history — (i) Jehovah, holy in His
essential nature, righteous in His kingly
dealings with men, ruling over His people
and leading them on to a final and complete
triumph ; (2) the nation itself, Jehovah's son
and servant, ideally holy and righteous as
Jehovah Himself; (3) the king, the ^pia-Tos
fiaaiXevs, the day of whose anointing was
ideally the day in which he, the nation's re
presentative, was born into a new relation of
sonship towards Jehovah. Different elements
in the hope of ultimate victory and exaltation
were brought out now by this prophet, now by
that. It was in prosaic days of failure that
they were welded together into an idea which
moved and quickened the whole nation. For
this rise of the Messianic hope, as it appears to
us in New Testament times, we may perhaps
say, though an artificial analysis is always
partial and incomplete, that there were three

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 127
main causes — literary, political, religious. (1)
The Messiah appears as the chief figure in an
eschatological literature, to which the sense of
national failure gave birth. (2) The Messiah,
the divine King after the Davidic type, fills
the place in the political hopes of the nation
left vacant by the degeneracy of the later
Asmonean princes. (3) The Messiah becomes
the centre of a deep religious belief in
Jehovah's activity on behalf of His people, a
belief which was a reaction from, and a
protest against, the scholasticism of the Scribes
and the materialism of the Sadducees. Thus
in the ideas which gathered round the figure of
the Messiah there were two essential elements
— deliverance and reformation ; salvation from
servitude, and a cleansing from the sins which
defiled, and from the sinful ones who degraded,
the religious life of the people.
It would be a mistake, of course, to suppose
that there was a uniform advance in the Jewish
hope of the Messiah. The idea necessarily
developed differently in different classes of
minds. Thus Professor Dalman {Die Worte
Jesu, p. 244) points out that there were two con-

128 HULSEAN" LECTURES lectj
ceptions which can be traced as existing side by
side at the time of the Advent — an older view
which regarded the Messiah as prince among a
people whose deliverer had been God ; a more
recent belief according to which the Messiah
himself was the redeemer, and afterwards the
ruler, of the nation. And if we must allow for
variations, there is another and a more serious
error against which we must be on our guard.
We know how the Messianic belief had its
consummation in the Christian creed. We
know how, when their national hope became
almost extinct, the Jews with pathetic persist
ency clung to their belief that Messiah would
come, but were constrained by the logic of
events to transfer their conception of Messiah
to a less earthly sphere. We must beware
then lest into the Messianic expectation which
was prevalent in our Lord's days we read
a religious and spiritual consciousness which
did not as a matter of fact belong to it.
" The office of the Messiah," to quote from
Professor Dalman once more (p. 245), " did not
lie in his being an exemplar, or a moral teacher,
or one who makes atonement, still less in his

ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 129
being a dispenser of the Divine Spirit ; it con
sisted simply in this — his reigning over Israel
as a king who answers to the divine will."
Let us now examine some points in the
earlier speeches of the Acts, among which, for
our present purpose, we may include St. Paul's
address in the synagogue of Antioch. The
speakers, who believed Jesus to be the Christ,
and the hearers were alike in this, that they
were familiar with the ideas and the language
of the Messianic hope. If the speeches are in
any real sense authentic, they will be found to
be impregnated with these ideas ; their state
ments and appeals will be expressed in this
language. There is a group of phrases in the Apostolic
speeches which at first strikes the reader as
simply archaic — echoes from the early records
of Israel's history : " The God of our fathers
raised up Jesus" (v. 30), "a Prince and a
Saviour" {dp^qyov Kal <ru>Tr\pa, v. 31), " God
brought unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus" (xiii. 23).
We turn to the Book of Judges and we find
that similar phrases are used almost as an
historical formula : " The Lord raised up a
' K

1 30 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
saviour to the children of Israel, who saved
them " {rjyeipev Kvpios crtDTfjpa to3 ^crparfk Kal eo-aaev
aiTovs, iii. 9). The word "captain," "prince"
{dpxvyos), occurs several times in the Pentateuch
and in the Book of Judges (though the Greek
texts vary) in reference to the military leaders
of Israel. Our first impulse is to set down
these expressions as instances of St. Luke's
constant habit of using the language of the
LXX. But the Book of Judges is, we must
confess, remote from the work of the Lord Jesus
Christ ; it is not that part of the Old Testament
to which the mind of a Christian writer would
instinctively turn for adumbrations of His
redemptive work. There are, however, in fact
abundant proofs that such language,- derived
from the history of Israel's earliest deliverances,
was part of the current phraseology — liturgical
and literary — of the Messianic hope. In the
Eighteen Benedictions (xi.), for example, the
promise of Isaiah becomes a prayer : " Restore
our judges as at the first." In the oldest
portion of the Sibylline Oracles (iii. 652 ff.)
and in the Psalms of Solomon — to refer only
to two specimens of extra- Canonical Jewish

ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 131
literature — the Messiah is depicted as a royal
captain triumphing over the ungodly powers.
" Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them
their king, the son of David. . . . and gird
him with strength that he may break in
pieces them that rule unjustly. . . . He shall
destroy the ungodly nations with the word
of his mouth" (Pss. Sol. xvii. 23 ff.1). In this
connexion in particular the words "salvation,"
"saviour" (deliverance, deliverer), so precious
in their known — ay, and in their to us as yet
unknown and unimagined, treasuries of hope,
are well worthy of study. Jesus the Nazarene is
the Saviour ; "in none other is there salvation "
(iv. 12). The occasion of these last words is
the healing of the cripple. To St. Peter and
to his hearers the close connexion of healing
and salvation— the Messianic salvation (comp.
Pss. Sol. x. 9) — -would be no strange thought.
" Heal us " — I quote from one form of the
Eighteen Benedictions, — " Heal us, Jehovah, and
we shall be healed. Save us and we shall be
saved. . . . Yea, cure and heal all our diseases
and all our pains and all our wounds. For Thou,
1 See Ryle and James' note on ver. 26.

132 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
O God, art a compassionate and faithful healer.
Blessed art Thou, Jehovah, even He that healeth
the diseased of His people Israel.1 " The word
salvation, as St. Peter uses it, is still coloured by
the lower associations of national aspiration —
deliverance, restoration, unity ; it is the divine
gift of perfect soundness vouchsafed to a nation
wearied by disaster and torn by internal strife.
Such "salvation," such deliverance, Messiah
was to bring. But, on the other hand, the
word, as St. Peter uses it, is already being
transplanted into the spiritual sphere ; already it
speaks of blessings corresponding to the needs
of every part of our nature, the full sum of all
the divine activities and gifts which meet the
case of sinful man.
There are two designations of our Lord
in St. Peter's speeches which claim particular
notice. (i) The Lord Jesus is "the Holy and
1 I have given the eighth Benediction in the fullest form. In the
' ' Babylonian '' recension of the Benedictions (Dalman, Die Worte
Jesu, p. 302) it is somewhat briefer. In the " Palestinian" recension
(ib. p. 300) it runs thus : " Heal us, Jehovah our God, from the trouble
of our heart ; and sorrow and sighing remove from us, and bring healing
for our strokes. Blessed art Thou, even He that healeth the diseased
of His people Israel. "

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 133
Righteous One " (iii. 14 ;. comp. iv. 27, 30). In
the speech of St. Stephen and in the message
of Ananias, the Hebrew disciple at Damascus,
He is "the Righteous One" (vii. 52, xxii. 14).
Nowhere else in the Acts or in the New
Testament are these terms thus used. Both
these conceptions of the Messianic character —
holiness and righteousness — are drawn from the
very fountain of the Messianic idea. Jehovah
is holy and righteous. Israel is holy and
righteous. He therefore who is the vicegerent
of Jehovah and the flower and consummation
of Israel must in the highest degree possess
these endowments. And as a matter of fact
both these characteristics have a prominent
place in the pre-Christian pictures of Messiah —
"He is free from sin" (Pss. Sol. xvii. 41);
" He is a righteous king and taught of God "
{ib. 35). In the Book of Enoch " the Righteous
One " is, as in the Acts, a title of the Messiah.
He is " the Righteous and Elect One " (liii. 6) ;
" The Righteous One shall appear before the
eyes of the elect righteous ones" (xxxviii. 2) ;
" This is the Son of Man who hath right
eousness, with whom dwelleth righteousness"

134 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
(xlvi. 3). In later Jewish writings and prayers
such phrases as " our righteous Messiah," " Thy
righteous Messiah,"are not uncommon (Dalman,
Die Worte Jesu, p. 241). The peculiar combina
tion found in the Acts, "holy and righteous,"
does not, so far as I have observed, occur else
where as a description of the Messiah Himself;
but in Enoch " the righteous and holy ones "
is in several passages a designation of the
Messianic people (xxxviii. 5, xlviii. 1, 7, li. 2).
It is only when the close relation between the
Messiah and the Messianic people, which is so
clearly implied in Enoch, and which was ex
plicitly recognised in later Jewish literature (see
the Midrash quoted in Edersheim's Life and
Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. p. 716), is borne
in mind that the full significance of St. Peter's
words appears. By their deliberate rejection of
the " Holy and Righteous " Messiah, and their
deliberate approval of a "murderer" as the
man of their choice, the people repudiated their
position as the Messianic nation, and passed
over into the ranks of the ungodly and sinful.
As before, so here also, we notice that the
Jewish words and the Jewish conceptions were

ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 135
ready for the highest Christian uses. We
remember St. Paul's teaching about "the
righteousness of Christ." We remember how
St. John, who, as he was dreaming youthful
dreams of the glories of Messiah's coming, was
pointed by the Forerunner to "the Lamb of
God," long after, when he had lived on into the
new age, took up the familiar Messianic titles
and applied them to the Lord in His heavenly
ministry — " We have an Advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous One " ;
" Ye have an anointing from the Holy One "
(1 John ii. 1, 20). We have then, on the
one hand, the Jewish application of the terms
Righteous and Holy to the Messiah and the
Messianic people, and, on the other hand, St.
John's use of these words in relation to the
Lord in Heaven. St. John's language seems
to imply an intermediate stage in the history
of these Christological expressions ; an applica
tion of them, that is, to the historical Christ
such as we find in the Petrine speeches of the
Acts. (2) If these words describe Messiah's
character, another phrase expresses his relation

136 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
to God — "the Servant," "the Servant of the
Lord." The title occurs four times in the Acts,
twice in the prayer of the Apostles in chapter iv.
(iii. 13, 26, iv. 27, 30). It is, of course, derived
from a series of passages in the deutero- Isaiah,
where it primarily points to the people of Israel
personified in its Godward relations.1 Accord
ing to the principle referred to above, based on
the quasi -identification of the Messiah with
the Messianic people, the title of the idealized
Israel was transferred to the idealized ruler.
In later Jewish exegesis this personal inter
pretation of the prophet's words was the
current one. According to the Targum on Is.
xliii. 10 (Dalman, ib. p. 227 ; Edersheim, Life
and Times, ii. p. 726), Jehovah speaks through
the prophet to " my servant the Messiah."
And the use of this title in Apostolic days is
certified by its occurrence in the Apocalypse of
Baruch (lxx. 9): "Whosoever escapes . . .
will be delivered into the hands of my servant
Messiah." It was then in accordance with the
mode of speech prevalent among the Jews that
1 Driver, Isaiah, His Life and Times, pp. 175 ff. ; Kirkpatrick,
The Doctrine of the Prophets, pp. 381 ff.

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 137
St. Peter should call Him whose Messiahship
he proclaimed "the Servant."1 But here an
important consideration comes in. The Hebrew
word (-qs), used by the prophet in this series of
passages, means, and can only mean, servant.
The Greek word {m-als), which the LXX. trans
lator chose as the equivalent in most of these
passages, is ambiguous ; it may mean servant
or it may mean son. Hence a Hellenistic
Jew, reading Isaiah in the LXX., might well
interpret these prophecies as, dealing with, or
as addressed to, Jehovah's son. That this
interpretation was as a fact current among
Greek -speaking Jews appears from two con
siderations. In the first place we appeal to
the Alexandrian Book of Wisdom. Here (ii.
12-20) a description is given of the "righteous
man." His persecutors taunt him with his
presumption — " He nameth himself irah KvpLov."
1 That the word wais in the Acts means servant, not son (child),
seems clear (1) from the juxtaposition in the Apostolic prayer (iv.
24-30) of the phrases rbv dyiov iralSd cov 'Itjctovv and rod dylov waid6s
aov 'L;<roO and the phrase AaveiS waiSSs gov ; the latter phrase, the
unambiguous Hebrew original of which is common in Jewish prayers
(see p. 139), must mean "thy servant David" (comp. Luke i. 54, 69) ;
(2) from the fact that there is not in the context of any of the four
passages any such word as father, beloved (see p. 140).

138 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
" He vaunteth that God is his Farther. " " Let
us see if his words be true, and let us try what
shall befall in the ending of his life. For if the
righteous man is Gods son, he will uphold him."
In this passage the whole connexion of thought
makes it plain that the writer understood irah
Kvplov as meaning " the Lord's son." Again, in
Matt. xii. 1 8 ff. we have a Greek translation of
Is. xiii. i ff. (differing from the LXX. and not
without points of similarity to the rendering of
Theodotion) in which the fact that 6 ayon-Tyro?
fiov is parallel to 6 irah p,ov seems to make it
clear that irah must be taken as meaning son.
This conclusion is confirmed when we turn to
the accounts of the Baptism and of the Trans
figuration of our Lord (Matt. iii. 17, Mark i. 11,
Luke iii. 22 ; Matt. xvii. 5, Mark ix. 7, Luke ix.
35). On both occasions the voice from heaven
greets our Saviour as " my Son " {6 vlos pov).
But it is clear that the Greek representation of
the divine words, which lies behind the Synop
tists' report, is based on that revised Greek
version of Is. xiii. 1 — probably a Palestinian
version — to which reference has just been made.
From these facts it seems to be a necessary

in THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 139
inference that, while the Jews who could read
the Hebrew text or who used an Aramaic
paraphrase invariably understood the prophet
to be referring to "the servant of the Lord,"
many Hellenistic Jews took his words as apply
ing to " the son of the Lord."
From the different interpretations of the
prophet's phrase current among the Hebrews
and among the Hellenists, we pass to the con
sideration of its use in the early Christian
Church. The word servant is not uncommon
in Jewish prayers in reference to David, the
type of the Messianic king — " The sprout of
David Thy servant cause to flourish " {Bene
diction xv.). " Let all who trust in Thee rejoice
... in the sprout of David Thy servant "
{Habinenu1). "May our remembrance rise
and come and be accepted before Thee, and
the remembrance of our Fathers, and the re
membrance of Messiah the son of David,
Thy servant " {Authorised Daily Prayer Book,
1 The word Habinenu (" cause us to understand ") is the first word,
and the name, of a prayer which is a kind of summary of the Eighteen
Benedictions (Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, p. 304). The above phrase—
David Thy servant — has a place both in the Palestinian and in the
Babylonian recension of the Habinenu. It is found in the Babylonian,
but not in the Palestinian, recension of Benediction xv.

140 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
p. 241). With these Messianic and liturgical
associations, probably through the medium of
the Hellenistic synagogues, the word, repre
sented by its Greek equivalent -n-ah, passed
over into the liturgical vocabulary of the
Christian Church. It is found, in application
to our Lord, in a series of prayers or liturgical
passages in sub-Apostolic and early Christian
literature (Clem. 59 [thrice] ; Mart. Polyc. 14;
Acta Theclae 24 ; comp. Ep. Diog. 8). But
now the Christian consciousness, accustomed to
the devout contemplation of the Lord's divine
nature and quickened by the controversies with
the Ebionites, shrank from speaking of Him as
"servant," and hence jealously guarded the
interpretation of the word by the addition of
the unambiguous epithets "beloved," "only
begotten." The only passages in early Christian
literature (apart from the Acts) where the word
irah is used of our Lord in the sense of servant
are two Eucharistic prayers in the Didache",
clearly of extreme antiquity and based on
Jewish prayers — "We thank Thee for the
holy vine of David Thy servant, which Thou
didst make known to us by Jesus Thy servant."

ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 141
Thus the use of the pre-Christian Messianic
title the Servant is most primitive. It carries us
back into the days when the vocabulary of the
Church was in the earliest stage of its history.
II. We pass on now to consider the witness
borne in the Petrine speeches to the historical
events of our Lord's life on earth.
The Lord's ministry fills but a little space in
the speeches which belong to the early period
of the history. It was well known to St.
Peter's hearers at Jerusalem, and it was over
shadowed by more recent events. In the
address of St. Peter to the household at
Csesarea, delivered at a much later time, it is
noteworthy that greater stress is laid on the
history of our Lord before the Passion (x. 36-
39). Here the Apostle refers to the Baptism
as the inauguration of the Lord's Messiahship :
" God anointed Him with the Holy Ghost and
with power " (comp. iv. 27). The words are an
echo of the prophecy of Isaiah (lxi. 1), which
the Lord claimed for Himself in the synagogue
at Nazareth (Luke iv. 17 ff.). From another
point of view they have a remarkable parallel

142 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
in the picture of the Messiah presented to us
in the Psalms of Solomon (xvii. 42) — "God
made him mighty by the Holy Spirit " (0 6ebs
KaTTjpydo-aTO airov Svvarbv iv TrvevjiaTi d<yiq>\. On
the day of Pentecost one and only one side
of the Lord's ministry is touched upon by St.
Peter. "Jesus the Nazarene, a man proved
to be from God to you " {diroSeSeiyfievov airb
tov 0eov eh ifias Svvdfiecnv k.tX.) — a messenger
from God to Israel (so I venture to think the
words must be understood ; comp. John iii. 2)
— " by mighty works and wonders and signs,
which God did by Him in the midst of you,
even as ye yourselves know" (ii. 22). These
words, together with the briefer allusion in
x. 38, are the only references in the New
Testament, outside the Gospels, to the Lord's
ministry of miracles. Miracles are like special
providences and (as we call them) remarkable
answers to prayer. Such experiences bring
assurance — a deep and happy assurance — of
the watchful and loving care of God to him to
whom they are vouchsafed. But the assurance
in its fulness is for himself alone. He cannot
communicate it to a stranger. Let him tell

in THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 143
his tale to a fellow-Christian wearily plodding
on along a dull road of daily duty and care,
unvisited by any such bright angels from
heaven, to him it will be a tale with little or no
living force ; nay, though he does not question
the providence of God, this story, which no
experience of his own enables him to realize,
calls into activity the sceptical instinct within
him, and he becomes alive to possibilities of
misinterpretation and exaggeration. He is no
unbeliever ; but this special piece of evidence
finds no response within himself. The appeal
made just in this one speech to those who had
themselves seen the Lord's wonderful works,
taken in connexion with the silence of the
New Testament writers elsewhere, is full of
meaning. The naturalness of it here is em
phasized by the very absence of anything like
it elsewhere. St. Peter's words here as to our Lord's
miracles are in remarkable harmony with the
historical and doctrinal teaching of St. John's
Gospel. They refer to a ministry of miracles
in Judaea, which is not recorded by St. Luke
or by the other Synoptists, but which is a

144 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
special theme of St. John. Again, the inter
pretation of the Lord's miracles, briefly and
very simply set forth in the Petrine speech,
is that which is characteristic of the discourses
in St. John. They not only answered to the
popular Messianic expectation (John vii. 31 ;
comp. Joseph. Antiq. xx. viii. 6), but they were
proofs, easy of discernment, of a divine com
mission and a divine presence (Acts ii. 22,
x. 38). "We know that thou art a teacher
come from God : for no man can do these
signs that thou doest, except God be with
him " ; " The very works that I do bear witness
of me, that the Father hath sent me" ; "The
Father abiding in me doeth his works " (John
iii. 2, v. 36, xiv. 10). The miracles of Jesus
the Nazarene bore witness to those who saw
them that He came from God, and that God
was with Him.
The sufferings and death of Jesus of Nazareth
naturally occupy in these speeches a far larger
space than the ministry. We have already
seen how closely the speeches of St. Peter
keep to the language of the Messianic hope and

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 145
of the popular Messianic conceptions. But in
the sufferings of an alleged Messiah there was
something new — shamefully, audaciously new.
Within the compass of national expectation
there was no room for a crucified Messiah.
Three centuries of national sorrows had to
elapse before the idea of a suffering Messiah
became familiar to Jewish thought. If the
Jewish author of the Second Book of Esdras
speaks of the death of Messiah, it has no
special significance attaching to it. The writer,
in the deep melancholy of his views of human
life and human destiny, conceives of the world
as at last overwhelmed by a universal winter in
which all life withers and passes away — -"After
these years shall my son Christ die, and all
that have the breath of life. And the world
shall be turned into the old silence seven days,
like as in the first beginning : so that no man
shall remain" (vii. 29 f). But in general the
death of Messiah was not spoken of in Jewish
anticipations of the coming age of triumph any
more than the certainty of his death would be a
favourite theme in the panegyric of any great
national hero. It was not the fact that Jesus
L

146 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Christ died, but that He died as He did,
that seemed to give the lie to the Messianic
claims which His followers made for Him.
As to the sufferings of Jesus of Nazareth
St. Peter is represented as insisting on two
points. (a) Jewish thought, at least in some of its
forms, dwelt on the predestination of Messiah.
The thought finds remarkable expression in
the Book of Enoch : " And before the sun and
the signs were created, before the stars of the
heaven were made, [the] name [of the Son of
Man] was named before the Lord of Spirits "
(xlviii. 3 ; comp. 2 Esdras vii. 28, xii. 32, xiii.
26, 52 ; Pss. Sol. xvii. 23). In the speeches of
the Acts the idea of Messiah's predestination
is emphasized, but it is emphasized in regard
to the sufferings of Jesus. They are brought
within the folds of the divine will for His
Anointed One ; they also had a sure place
in the working out through Him of the
divine purpose. On the human side there
were the ignorance and the hatred of rulers
and of people. On the divine side there was
"the determinate counsel and foreknowledge

in THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 147
of God " (ii. 23). The enemies of Jesus
did " whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel
foreordained to come to pass " (iv. 28). The
crucifixion of Jesus was no chance victory
snatched by the Jewish rulers. "Suffering"
was a necessary element in the divinely-ordered
service of Messiah (comp. Luke xxiv. 26).
(/3) And, in the second place, St. Peter,
according to the representation of his words in
the Acts, anticipates' the worst which the
Lord's enemies could say of the humiliation
and the religious ignominy involved in the
sufferings endured by Jesus. With a few
allusive words he recalls to his hearers on
the day of Pentecost what had happened
at the last Passover feast. I doubt whether
any other Greek sentence could describe
so vividly and from so many sides the
outward sufferings of the Saviour — tovtov
bkSotov Sia %eipb<; dvoficov irpoo-irrj^avTes
dvelXare (ii. 23). The words bring before our
minds the horror of abandonment by man
and by God to the pitilessness of enemies ;
the degradation involved in the instruments of
the execution — "sinners of the Gentiles" ; the

148 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
inhuman simplicity of the mode of death. But
beyond all the other sufferings there was one
mystery of humiliation. There is an explicit
reference to it in the speech before the San-
hedrin — "whom ye slew, hanging him on a tree"
(v. 30 ; comp. x. 39, xiii. 29). The allusion is to
two sentences in a well-known passage of the Law
(Deut. xxi. 22 f), a passage which has influenced
the language of the New Testament in more
passages than we are wont to think : " If . . . thou
hang [a man] on a tree ... he that is hanged
is the curse of God." In two ways the words
" hanging him on a tree," recalling, as they
could not but do, their context in Deuteronomy,
were relevant. In the first place, on a loose
interpretation of the Hebrew words, "he that
is hanged is the curse of God," was based the
later Jewish law for the punishment of blas
phemy, as it is recorded by Josephus {Antiq.
iv. viii. 6) : "Let him that blasphemeth God be
stoned and hang all day, and let him be buried
with dishonour and in obscurity." The High
Priest, before whom St. Peter is represented as
speaking, had condemned Jesus of Nazareth as
a blasphemer. As a blasphemer the manner

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 149
of His death — " hanged upon a tree " — had in
Jewish eyes proclaimed Him before God and
man. Again, according to the natural, and, as
it appears, the current interpretation of the
words of Deuteronomy, an interpretation
adopted by the LXX., he that was "hanged
upon a tree " was " accursed by God." To a
Jew then the cross was infinitely more than
an earthly punishment of unutterable suffering
and shame ; it was a revelation that on the
crucified there rested the extreme malediction
of the wrath of God. The idea was no theo
logical refinement. It could not but be present
to the mind of every Jew who knew the Law.
Within a few years, as we learn from St. Paul
(1 Cor. xii. 3), it was formulated in a creed of
unbelief — avdOepa 'lyo-ovs. It found expression
in the name by which in later days the Lord was
known among the Jews — ^brfn , "the hanged
one." The Sanhedrin, before whom St. Peter
is represented as speaking, regarded Jesus the
Nazarene as a blasphemer and as one accursed
by God. Behind the phrase put into the
mouth of the Apostle there lies a controversial
background which we can restore only when

150 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
we carefully piece together scattered indications
of Jewish thought.
"Whom ye slew, hanging him on a tree."
Here was a public, an impressive, a final
attestation what Jesus of Nazareth was in the
sight of God. Here was an end. "He trusted
on God ; let him deliver him now, if he desireth
him ; for he said, I am the Son of God " (Matt.
xxvi'i. 43). But there had been no deliverance.
God had been silent. There could be but one
conclusion, one certain conclusion, drawn from
the very words of Scripture — dvd8e/Ma 'Irjo-ovs.
An end? No deliverance? "Accursed"?
Nay, " whom ye crucified, whom God raised
from the dead" (iv. 10). "Ye . . . killed the
Prince of life ; whom God raised from the
dead" (iii. 15). "Him ... ye by the hand of
lawless men did crucify and slay : whom God
raised up" (ii. 23 f). The Resurrection, the
immediate act of God, was the divine reversal
of Israel's rejection, the divine answer to Israel's
blasphemy. Jesus, raised by the Father from
the dead, could not be "accursed."
But the Resurrection from the Dead was a
preface to the Exaltation. " Being therefore by

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 151
the right hand of God exalted, and having
received of the Father the promise of the Holy
Ghost, he hath poured forth this, which ye see
and hear. For David ascended not into the
heavens" (ii. 33 f). Here again there seems
to be lurking in the background a step in the
unfolding of the Lord's glories which is only
hinted at in St. Luke's summary of the speech.
What calls for the caution, " For David as
cended not into the heavens " ? Why this
" For " ? Surely some words of a psalm about
"ascension" or "exaltation" had been quoted,
which might have been applied by a superficial
reader to the ancient king. And when to the
consideration of the sequence of thought we add
a consideration of the language — vtywdeh, dvefit),
Xaficov (ii. 33 f.) — we are led to conjecture that the
words of the great psalm of triumph- — " Thou
hast ascended on high . . . Thou hast received
gifts " {dvaftds eh vyjros . . . e'Xa/3e? Sofiara, Ps. lxvii.
[Ixviii.] 19) — had in reality been adduced by
St. Peter to express, or to confirm, his witness
to the Lord's Ascension. And if this view be
correct, then we are able to point back to
something implied, but not explicitly expressed,

152 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
in the speech as we have it — a relic of an
authority fuller than St. Luke's obviously ab
breviated version of St. Peter's words, fuller
and more original.
"Raised from the dead," "by the right
hand of God exalted," "glorified," — such are
the phrases used in these speeches to ex
press the facts of the history and the different
aspects of the Lord's majesty. Two questions
at once arise. How is it said that the facts are
attested ? To what conclusion as to the Lord's
Person are they taken as pointing ?
(a) How were the hearers of the Apostolic
words to know that the divine reversal of
Israel's rejection was a fact ? To what evi
dence is the speaker represented as making
his appeal ? The story of the Cross was
notorious ; no one denied it. What of the
Resurrection and Ascension ? The different
elements of the answer to this necessary
question are scattered throughout the speeches.
The assurance of the Resurrection and the
Ascension was to be found in the prophetic
words of Scripture — the words which were
universally regarded as the words of David,

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 153
but which in the magnificence of their hope
could not be true of him whose sepulchre was
in the midst of his people. It was to be found
in the actual experience of those particular
Israelites on the day of Pentecost — " this which
ye see and hear" (ii. 33). It was to be found
in the present beneficent activity of Jesus of
Nazareth — in the miracle wrought in His name:
He is active; therefore He lives. It was to
be found in the personal testimony of the
Apostles themselves to " the things which
they had seen and heard" (iv. 20). It was to
be found lastly in the inner witness of the
Spirit — "we are witnesses of these things ; and
so is the Holy Ghost" (v. 32) — the Spirit who
revealed the fitness of the Resurrection and its
harmony with the divine purpose as partially
shadowed forth in the words of Scripture.
Such are the evidences of his Gospel which
the Apostle is represented as pleading. They
are not set forth systematically ; but when
we reflect on them together, the appeal is
absolutely congruous with the supposed situa
tion, and it would be hard to add another to
this series of testimonies.

154 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
{b) What is the inference which, in St.
Luke's record of his words, St. Peter draws
for his brother Israelites from these facts?
It is contained in the solemn charge with
which the Pentecostal sermon closes : " Let
all the house of Israel know therefore as
suredly, that God hath made him both Lord
and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified "
(ii. 36). It is not, of course, that Messiah-
ship and Lordship first then belonged to
Jesus Christ when the shame of the cross
was obliterated. But then they were proved
by God's act to be His true prerogatives.
He was then set forth finally as Messiah and
as Lord. It is at this point more than at any other
that we desire a decisive answer to the question,
What was the original language of the speech ?
If the Apostle used Aramaic, then it seems
certain from the usage of that language that
the term he used was not Lord, but our Lord l
— "God hath made him our "Lord"; thus the
stringency of the title Lord used absolutely
is to some extent, at least in appearance,
1 Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, p. 268.

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 155
softened.1 And further, on this supposition
as to the original language, the particular word
used must almost certainly have been Marana
or Maran, which we know from the Marana-
tha2 preserved by St. Paul (i Cor. xvi. 22)
and in the Didache (x. ; comp. Apost. Constit.
vii. 26) to have been in early use among
Jewish Christians as a designation of Jesus
Christ.3 But, in truth, as to the broad significance of
these words, in which the Apostle is repre
sented as summing up his witness to the Person
of Jesus, it matters little whether he spoke in
1 But compare Acts a. 36 (oSris ianv irdvruv Kipios), Rom. x. 12,
Eph. iv. 10.
2 The probable meaning of Maranatha (i.e. Marana-tha) is, " Our
Lord come" (see Thayer's article in Hastings' Diet, of the Bible, iii.
p. 241). Compare Apoc. xxii. 20 (ipxav Ktfpie 'li)<rov) and the Amen
bo (Amen, come) found in a Jewish prayer (Taylor, The Teaching of
the Twelve Apostles, pp. 77 ff).
3 The only other Aramaic word which could have been used is
Rabbonana (Ribbonana), i.e. our Rabbon. Compare pafsfiovvei (i.e.
my Rabbon : Mark x. 51, John xx. 16). But Rabboni cannot have
been essentially different from Rabbi (Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, p.
279) ; and St. John's interpretation (8 Xtyerai AiSdo-KaXe) shews that
the disciples connected the title with conceptions which would be
wholly alien to the context in Acts ii. 36. On the other hand, Mari
would certainly be the word which would naturally represent the
"my Lord" of Psalm ex. 1 (so Evang. Hierosol. in Matt. xxii. 44),
quoted by St. Peter in the immediately preceding context.

156 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Aramaic or in Greek. These titles — Christ,
Lord — were no new inventions. The designa
tion Lord, as well as Christ, had a history in
the past. In the Old Testament the terms
" the Anointed," " King," " Lord " ("my Lord,"
that is, and the like) were closely related
together (comp. e.g. i Sam. xxiv. 6, 8, io).
Later Jewish literature shews that the word lord
{mar) was used in a great variety of applica
tions — of earthly masters, of the High Priest,
of the King, of Messiah, of God Himself.1
Turning from the Hebrew and Aramaic, we
note that in the LXX., over and above the
" my Lord " and the like representing the
Hebrew, we once, through a mistaken trans
lation, have the term ^pio-Tos Kvpios used of the
earthly king (Lam. iv. 20). Once again, in
the Psalms of Solomon (xvii. 36) the king of
the restored and purified Israel is xPta"ro^ icvpios
(comp. Luke ii. 11), Both in the Aramaic then
and in the Greek the term Lord is a form of
reverential address or designation, the exact
shade of meaning being determined by the
context. And here the context — the context
1 Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, pp. 147 {., 266 ff.

iii THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 157
of history and the context of Scripture,
" Jehovah said to my Lord, Sit thou on my
right hand," raises the ancient title above
the sphere of the human and the earthly.
If the title Messiah chiefly emphasizes the
divine appointment to kingship, the title Lord
expresses majesty and sovereignty : and that
majesty is seated on the right hand of God ;
from the right hand of God that sovereignty is
exercised. The first Christian sermon culmi
nates in the first Christian creed, Ky>ioc 'Ihcotc,
Ky'pioc 'Ihcoyc Xpicto'c (1 Cor. xii. 3, Rom. x. 9;
Phil. ii. 11).
Thus the immemorial language of reverence,
reaching back to the loyal dutifulness which
surrounded and ennobled the throne of David,
language not without the consecration of
religious use, is now raised to a new and loftier
significance. It expresses a sovereignty which
belongs not to an earthly monarch but to a
heavenly king. When such language became
habitual, when adoration and worship were
seen to be its necessary corollary, then the
belief of the Catholic Church as to the Person
of Christ had taken a firm hold on the hearts

158 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
and consciences of His disciples. In this
language, arid in the facts of the Resurrection
and the Exaltation which called it forth, there
lay the premises from which there was
inevitably drawn the inference — the certain
and awful inference — of the Divinity of Jesus
Christ. But this conclusion is not as yet
asserted. The divine nature of Jesus the
Messiah is not as yet explicitly confessed. For
the present the terms in which the Apostle
describes his Master's glory and the issues of
his Master's work are borrowed from the
language of the Messianic hope. The pre
destination of Jesus the Messiah is spoken of
(ii. 23, iii. 18 ; comp. iv. 28), but His pre-
existence is not affirmed, nor is anything said
of His unique relation to the Father. The
Lord's death is not brought into connexion
with the conception of atonement, nor with
the problem of justification. There is no
allusion to the moral and spiritual power
of the Resurrection, or to the sanctifying
influence of the Holy Spirit. If we compare
St. Peter's speeches with any one of the
Apostolic Epistles (except that of St. James,

ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 159
which deals almost wholly with matters of
conduct), we see the wide difference between a
matured apprehension and exposition of the
Christian facts in their universal and absolute
significance, and, on the other hand, an imme
diate interpretation of them addressed to Jews
at Jerusalem, many of whom had cried, "Crucify
Him," and had watched the death "upon the
tree " of Jesus of Nazareth.
The more carefully we study the Petrine
speeches of the Acts, their language and their
thought, the deeper becomes our conviction
that there is a real harmony between them
and the alleged occasions of their utterance ;
and that, both from a literary and from a
theological standpoint, they cannot be the
invention of the Gentile author of the Book —
familiar, as he certainly was, with the teaching
of St. Paul, and writing when the peculiar
circumstances and the phases of thought which
they presuppose had long passed away.

And here I should close, were it not right
that I should refer, however inadequately, to

160 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
one subject which is prominent in our minds
to-day1 — prominent even at a time when our
hearts, as the hearts of all Englishmen, are
deeply moved by anxiety for our beloved
Queen, whom may God in His mercy still
preserve to us ; whom may God ever sustain,
in life and in death, with the comfort of His
presence and His love.
The mystery and the pathos of human life
are seen by us in one of their most impressive
forms when a place of signal honour and of
great responsibility is suddenly left vacant, and
its occupant is called away from a strenuous
and buoyant maturity, unsaddened by any
failure, and, till just the last, untouched by the
withering hand of decay ; when the triumphant
progress from strength to strength is in a
moment arrested ; and the man with whom
the world has not learned to associate the idea
of weariness rests from his labours.
Few men in his generation had grasped life
so firmly and at so many points as Bishop
Creighton. A brilliant teacher in the sister
University, he was called from the busy leisure
1 Dr. Creighton, Bishop of London, died on Monday, January 14.

in THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 161
of a country vicarage to be the first occupant
of the Chair of Ecclesiastical History among
ourselves. How he justified the choice, how
he served the University who welcomed him
as her adopted son, I need not remind you.
Even those whose studies lay in other spheres
of knowledge, and who did not come under his
immediate influence, recognised that Cambridge
had gained for a time the presence of a strong
and striking personality, and the loyal service
of an historian' of European reputation. Soon
— too soon, we perhaps think — the call came to
him to take his place among the fathers and
chief pastors of the National Church ; and later
the summons — recognised by him, it seems,
less as an advance to fresh honours than as
a challenge to unknown self-sacrifice — to gird
himself for the almost superhuman task of ruling
and guiding the church of the metropolis.
With Bishop Creighton, as with Bishop
Lightfoot, the gifts of the student, enlarged by
a wide experience of life, and disciplined by the
serious work of the teacher and by the historian's
minute and laborious search after truth, were
transfigured into the spirit of counsel and the
M

162 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
wise activities of the ecclesiastical statesman.
The final endeavour of his episcopate was, as
you know, to help men to penetrate beneath the
fleeting fashions of controversy to the funda
mental truths which are knit together in the
doctrine of the Eucharist. Sometimes the last
act of a great man interprets to those who remain
a complex character and gi ves something of unity
to the manifold aims and currents of the life.
It is impossible not to compare the late
Bishop of London with a great Dean of his own
Cathedral, whom some here may still remember,
and whose venerable and commanding presence
lives among the memories of my boyhood.
The resemblances and the contrasts between
the two men are alike significant. Dean
Milman, after the conflicts of earlier years,
reached a haven whence, as a calm spectator,
he could watch the strife of tongues and the
feverish activities of a new age with its new
needs and new methods. Bishop Creighton,
from a life of scholarly quiet, passed (with but
a brief interval) to that place in the English
Church where there can be no pause, no rest,
no refuge from the swarm of stinging anxieties,

Ill THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 163
no freedom from responsible decisions, no
cessation of the remorseless turmoil of strife
and debate. But there are substantial simi
larities between the two lives. Both were
marked men among their contemporaries at
Oxford. Both, as historians, took a foremost
place among the English men of letters of their
day. Both dedicated their powers to the epic
of Latin Christianity. Both were acknow
ledged as being in a pre-eminent degree links
between the faith and the theology and the
work of the Church and the world of literature
and art and science. Both rest in the Cathedral
in which they were chief ministers — the one
who lived to be revered, to use Dean Stanley's
word, as " the wise old man " ; the other who
" in a short time fulfilled a long time."
The lesson of such a life as we commemorate
to-day is plain and simple — we can all under
stand it ; we all need it — the dedication of gifts
of character and ability (be they great or small),
the use of such opportunities of service as our
Father in Heaven is pleased to give us, for
the glory of God and the benefit of His Holy
Church.

LECTURE IV

Aauelo ucn rap ioi<; tcne§ tinHperricac Tij toO eeoO BouXfi
ekoijuhoh Kal npoceTeeH npoc toCic naT^pac oOtoO.

3rd Sunday after Epiphany,
January 27, 1901.

IV

" David, after he had served his own generation, by the counsel of God
fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers." — Acts xiii. 36. 1
No one, I think, who ever held the office in
virtue of which it is my duty to speak to you
to-day has had a task so sad and so heavy
as that which has been mine last Sunday
and this Sunday. A week ago it was hard,
under the dark shadow of an impending
sorrow, to claim your attention to the details of
a subject of Biblical criticism. To-day, when
one only thought fills the mind of all, it is
harder still. I ask your forbearance, and I
think that I shall not ask it in vain, while I
bring before you first of all some portion of
1 Part of the Second Lesson at Evensong on Tuesday, 22nd January,
the day on which Queen Victoria died.
Only the earlier portion of this lecture and the part which deals with
Acts xiii. 15-41 were actually delivered. 167

168 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
that special subject which still remains for our
consideration — the witness of St. Paul.

St. Paul's activity extended over the whole
of the wide domain of the Church's life. He
sowed the seed of the word. He tended the
rising plant. He controlled the work of his
fellow-husbandmen, and brought it to pass that
the spiritual plants were no isolated growths,
but together became well-ordered "gardens of
the Lord." In other words, the Apostle was
an evangelist, a pastor, a ruler. It is in the
two latter aspects of his missionary work that
we know him in his Epistles. His writings are
an abiding source of guidance to the Christian
Church, because in them he spoke to men who
had already become Christian, and who were
in the same lists in which we struggle now.
We have indeed in the Epistles glimpses of
the earlier stages of his work ; we learn some
thing of his methods, still more of the spirit
which inspired those methods. We cannot
break up a living ministry into independent
sections. Yet it remains true that in the

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 169
Epistles it is not so much Paul the Herald as
Paul the spiritual Counsellor and Paul the
Ruler of Churches who is presented to us.
For materials with which to complete the por
trait we must turn, if it be veracious, to the
Book of the Acts. There we have what pur
ports to be a representation of the Apostle as a
sower of the spiritual seed — nay, as the husband
man whose supreme office it was to be the first
to break up the fallow ground of the heathen
world. Our task, then, in this final lecture is to
examine the witness of St. Paul as it is presented
to us in the Acts. In this investigation we must
always keep in view these three questions :
(1) What is the relation of the Pauline to
the Petrine speeches in the Acts ? Though it
is granted that all alike bear the marks of
having passed through the same editor's hand,
is there, nevertheless, a real and substantial
difference between the two series in regard
to doctrine, and, though necessarily in a less
conspicuous degree, in regard to diction ?
(2) What is the relation of the Pauline
speeches to the Pauline Epistles ? On the one

170 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
hand, are the speeches independent, i.e. no mere
literary copies of the Epistles? On the other,
can we trace, working behind the speeches, the
same mind which conceived the thoughts and
fashioned the language of the Epistles — the
same mind, but dealing in the speeches (except
in the one addressed to the Elders of Ephesus)
with situations and with subjects which could
have little or no place in the Epistles ?
(3) What is the mutual relation between the
Pauline speeches ? Does their congruity with
their several alleged occasions refute the theory
that they are the invention of the writer of the
Book? One not unimportant point in such a com
parison between the Pauline letters and the
Pauline speeches, it will from the nature of the
case be impossible to treat with any degree of
thoroughness — I mean coincidences in language.
All the speeches afford such parallels, but not
all in the same proportion. The address to
the Elders of Ephesus is richest in this respect ;
and this is that one among the Pauline speeches,
at which, according to our working hypothesis,
St. Luke himself was present, and which we

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 171
saw (p. 112) reasons for thinking to be based
on notes of St. Paul's words taken at the time.
Yet even here such coincidences are not osten
tatiously introduced, nor are they characterized
by mechanical precision. When we compare
the Epistles and the speeches, we discover not
identity of phraseology, but resemblance of
language — a resemblance which often lies be
neath the surface of the words.
The occasions during his long missionary
career on which St. Paul spoke as an evangelist
and as a pastor must have been numberless.
In the Acts we have specimens of his addresses
drawn from the several periods of his active
work, and representing its different elements.
The selection is made so skilfully, — it is so
thoroughly in harmony with what the Epistles
reveal of the Apostle's mind, — that the supposi
tion that he himself was St. Luke's authority
for these speeches (p. 1 20) is confirmed. The
Jew had the priority in St. Paul's order of
evangelization (Rom. i. 16; comp. ii. 9). Of
the Apostle's pleading with his own fellow-
countrymen we have examples in the brief but

172 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
important notice of his work at Damascus, in
the speech at Antioch of Pisidia (during the first
missionary journey), and in his last appeal to
the Jews at Rome. Again, the "Apostle of
the Gentiles" describes himself as "a debtor
both to Greeks and to Barbarians, both to the
wise and to the foolish " (Rom. i. 14). Accord
ingly, of his "hortatory discourses" (to use
Clement's phrase) — his first call to the Gentiles
to come forth from the cave in which the reali
ties of life could not be recognized in the false
and fleeting shadows which mocked them — we
have specimens in the speech addressed to the
simple folk of Lystra, and, on the other hand, in
the discourse to which a little group of Athenians
is represented as listening on the Areopagus.
Lastly, since in the spiritual husbandry of the
Apostle there was watering as well as sowing,
the Book includes one other representative
utterance — the pastoral speech at Miletus.
1. We turn first to St. Paul's witness to
Israel. Among the Epistles of St. Paul we have
none analogous to the Epistle of St. James and

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 173
the Epistle to the Hebrews — letters addressed,
as it appears, to purely Jewish communities.
In the churches founded by St. Paul the Jewish
Christians were united with the Gentile Chris
tians in the one brotherhood. In the Christian
assemblies the Apostle, doubtless, from time to
time turned and addressed himself now to the
Jews, now to the Gentiles, among his hearers.
Of these prophetic utterances in the Church
we probably have echoes in the Epistles. Here
we have a natural explanation of the fact that
in a single Epistle we find one passage in which
St. Paul appears to speak to Jewish converts,
and another passage in which he appeals to
Gentile converts.1 Though, therefore, there
are in the Epistles of St. Paul exhortations and
arguments which are specially addressed to
Jews, it yet remains true that in the Apostle's
writings we have no distinct and detailed
example of the way in which he presented the
Gospel to his own fellow-countrymen. The
Epistles, therefore, supply no model on which
a romancer could construct a Pauline sermon to
1 E.g. Rom. ii. 17 ff, iii. 9, iv. 1 (Jews) ; xi. 13 (Gentiles) : I Cor.
a. I (Jews) ; xii. 2 (Gentiles).

174 HULSEAN LECTURES lect:
Jews. .We have to inquire whether the record
in the Acts of St. Paul's teaching addressed to
Jews can be shewn to be intrinsically probable.
If it stands the test of such a scrutiny, we are
justified in regarding the Book, in respect of
this important subject, as complementary to the
Epistles, and as, in this respect also, bearing
witness to its own veracity.
The beginning of St. Paul's ministry to
Israel was the immediate sequel of his conver
sion. " Straightway in the synagogues he pro
claimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God." The
surprise and anger of the Jews, the historian
tells us, did but add fuel to the fire of the
Apostle's earnestness. " Saul increased the
more in strength, and confounded the Jews
which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is
the Christ" (ix. 20 ff). "Jesus is the Son of
God," " Jesus is the Christ." What is the rela
tion of these two statements of Saul's doctrine ?
The question gains emphasis from the fact that
this is the only eertain occurrence of the title
" Son of God " in the Acts.1 What did that
title mean on the lips of the newly called, and
1 On xx. 28, see below, p. 284.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 175
(from a human point of view) still uninstructed,
evangelist ? What connexion had it with the
current language of that Messianic hope in
which the preacher and his hearers alike
shared ? We must rapidly trace the lines of
thought which converge in this sacred title.
(i.) In the Old Testament, Israel, at that
crisis of deliverance which in one sense was
the beginning of national life, is designated as
Jehovah's son : " Thou shalt say unto Pharaoh,
Thus saith the Lord, Israel is my son, my first
born " (Ex. iv. 22 ; comp. Deut. xxxii. 6, Hos.
xi. 1, Jer. xxxi. 9). So in the Book of Enoch
(lxii. 11) the people are " His children and His
elect." (ii.) The King of the theocracy is Jehovah's
son. The thought finds clear expression in
the passage which is the foundation of the
national Davidic hope : " I will establish the
throne of his kingdom for ever. I will be his
father, and he shall be my son " (2 Sam. vii.
14). I need not remind you how this con
ception of the King of Israel is repeated and
expanded in the Psalter (Ps. lxxx. 26 f.).
(iii.) On the principle, to which reference

176 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
has often been made, that the highest character
istics of the People and of the King are
gathered up in the Messiah, we should expect
that the Messiah also would be represented as
"the Son of God." Nor is this expectation
disappointed. In one passage of Enoch (cv.
2),1 and in a series of passages in 2 Esdras
(vii. 28 f, xiii. 32, 37, 52, xiv. 9), God is
represented as speaking of Messiah as " my
Son," "my Son Christ," "I and my Son."
Again, the language of the Synoptic Gospels
makes it certain that the designation "Son of
God " was current as a Messianic title in our
Lord's days {e.g. Luke iv. 41).2
The point then in St. Luke's summary of
Saul's preaching at Damascus seems to be
this : Saul of Tarsus, who believed with a
lifelong intensity of conviction that he himself
on earth had seen Jesus in glory, and had
heard His voice speaking to him from heaven,
isolated and emphasized this aspect of Messiah-
ship ; he gave to this Messianic title a new
!¦ Dr. Charles (see his note in loco) considers the section an inter
polation. 2 Comp. the article on Peter (Simon) in Hastings' Dictionary of
the Bible, iii. p. 759 ; Dalman, Die Worte Jesu, pp. 224 ff,

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 177
and awful significance, as expressing an essential
truth about the nature of the glorified Messiah.
St. Peter, as we saw in the last lecture (pp.
154 ff), dwelt upon the exaltation and the
sovereignty of Jesus the Messiah. Saul of
Tarsus becomes from the first the Theologus
of the early Apostolic Church.
The exact language of St. Luke confirms
this interpretation of his words. The Messiah-
ship of Jesus was a matter of reasoning and of
proof. Scriptures could be adduced and placed
side by side. Saul "proved" to the Jews "that
this is the Christ." The divine Sonship, on
the other hand, was a matter rather of im
mediate conviction and of bold assertion : " He
proclaimed Jesus, that he is the Son of God."
It is important for us to remark that this
historical notice in the Acts is in entire agree
ment with the language of St. Paul himself,
when into one brief sentence he gathers up the
history of his conversion and of his communings
with himself and with the Spirit of God, who
dwelt and spoke within him : "It was the good
pleasure of God," he says (Gal. i. 15 f), "to
reveal his Son in me." N

178 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
In the common expectation of the Jews, as
we have already seen (p. 145), the death of the
Messiah was but the necessary close of life,
while in the foreground of the picture there lay
the triumph and the splendour of victory and
kingship ; in Jesus suffering and death were
revealed as a necessary and essential part of
Messiah's work. In like manner it is now
seen and proclaimed with unfaltering clearness
that the divine Sonship was not one among
many traits of Messiah's character, one casual
element in an inheritance derived from royal
and national prototypes, a vague and glorious
metaphor, but the central fact about: Him. In
the synagogues of Damascus the antithesis on
which the faith of the Catholic Church rests
was completed. " Jesus Messiah suffered " —
this side of the paradox of the Gospel had
been announced from the first. " Jesus
Messiah is the Son of God" — this comple
mentary truth is now for the first time (so far
as our knowledge goes) clearly and decisively
set forth.
Years of quiet preparation and of strenuous

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 179
labour elapse before the next occasion from
which the writer of the Acts draws another
specimen of the Apostle's witness to Israel.
Saul the convert has already become Paul the
Apostle. We take up St. Paul's " discourse of exhorta
tion l " spoken in the synagogue of the Pisidian
Antioch. Before we enter on a discussion of
its doctrine, there are two points in the form of
the speech which demand a brief notice.
{a) The speech opens with the words, " The
God of this people Israel chose our fathers "
(xiii. 17). What is the reference of the ex
pression, "this people Israel"? The explana
tions given by the commentators that the word
this looks back to the avSpes 'lo-par)\eirao of the
opening address {v. 16), or that the speaker
accompanied the word by a gesture, pointing
to the Israelites before him, seem to me forced
and unworthy. I cannot but think that we
must look in another direction for the inter-

1 xiii. 15, dvdpes adeX(poi, et ris 'ia-Tiv iv v/uv Xoyos TrapaKXrjtretDS
irpbs rbv Xabv, Xiyere. The words Xdyos wapaKXfoeuis are probably a
technical phrase used in the synagogues. Comp. Heb. xiii. 22, dSeX0ot,
cWxefl-Ce rod X67011 ttjs irapaKX-qaeus : I Tim. iv. 13, wpb<rexe rrj dva-
yvtbijeL, ryj irapaKXrifffi.

180 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
pretation. " The reading of the Scriptures " [in
the synagogues], says Schiirer,1 "was followed
by an edifying discourse or sermon, by which
the portion which had been read was explained
and applied." Our Lord in the synagogue at
Nazareth based the words which He addressed
to His fellow-townsmen upon the passage from
Isaiah which He had just read (Luke iv. 17 ff.).
Is it not natural to suppose that here also the
lections from the Law and the Prophets had
contained some emphatic reference to the
history and privileges of Israel, and that St.
Paul followed the common custom of the
synagogue, and took up in the opening words
of his address the prominent thought of the
Scriptures chosen for that Sabbath — "this
people Israel " ? But if this be so, we have
once more an indication that behind St. Luke's
record there lies a background of facts which
in the present instance is revealed only by one
allusive word, and that his informant recalled
details which have no place in his narrative.
{b) Again, when we turn to those passages
of the Pauline Epistles where a proof or an
1 History of the Jewish People, Eng. Trans., II. ii, p. 82.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 1S1
illustration of the matter in hand is adduced
from the Old Testament, we notice that St.
Paul is wont to draw from different parts of the
Old Testament, and to quote side by side, texts
which are linked together by the common use
of some characteristic expression or " catch
word " ; and further, that he sometimes revises,
or adopts a revision of, the Greek of the LXX.,
in order that he may create or emphasize a
verbal resemblance between the passages which
he desires to bring together. As instances of
this mode of quotation we may quote the re
peated eTnnaTapaTos of Gal. iii. 10, 1 3 (" Cursed
is every one which continueth not in all things
that are written in the book of the law. . . .
Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree "),
or the repeated vckos of 1 Cor. xv. 54 f. {"Death
is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is
thy victory ? ").1 Now this synagogue discourse
1 (a) Gal. iii. 10, iwiKardparos was 8s ovk i[tfj,4veL k.t.X., is a
quotation from Deut. xxvii. 26, iwiKardparos k.t.X. ; v. 13,
iwiKardparos was 6 Kpefidfxevos k.t.X., from Deut. xxi. 23, KeKara-
pafiivos vwb deov was Kpep.dfievos k.t.X. (b) I Cor. xv. 54, KaTewbBt]
6 Bdvaros els vIkos, comes from Is. xxv. 8, Kariwiev 6 Bdvaros io~x6o~as
(Heb. "He hath swallowed up death for ever"); v. 55, wov crov,
ddvare, rb vXkos, from Hos. xiii. 14, wov i] SlK-q <rov, Bdvare (Heb.
" O death, where are thy plagues?").

182 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
is the only passage in the Acts where we have
a Pauline argument depending on citations from
the Old Testament, and here— and here only,
I believe, in the Acts — do we find an instance
of these two closely-related characteristics of
the Pauline manner of quotation. The Apostle
is represented as quoting together a passage
from Isaiah (lv. 3) and a passage from the
Psalms (xvi. 10), and as so altering the
language of the passage of Isaiah that the
words of the prophet have a twofold verbal
relation to the words of the Psalter — Swat*
vfilv Ta ocria AaveiS rd TTiaTa1 . . . ov Scocreis tov
oaoov o-ov ISelv Sia<f>0opdv. The point may seem
to some a trivial one ; but it is trivial manner
isms which are the surest sign of the identity
of a writer or a speaker.
The speech in one respect resembles that of
St. Stephen, with which it is commonly com
pared. It opens with a review of the ancient
history of Israel. But here all similarity be
tween the two speeches ends. The range and
the motive of the reference to the past in the
1 The LXX. runs thus : dtaByo-ofmi ifuv diaS-qKr/v altbviov, rd ti<na
AaveiS rd wio-rd. The omission of diaB^K-qv aldnov, it will be further
noted, makes the substitution of Sii<rw for Sia^tro,u.ai natural.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 183
two utterances are wholly different. St. Stephen
was mainly concerned to insist that the earliest
crises of revelation were connected with places
outside the sacred soil of the Holy Land, and
to shew that the rejection of Jesus the Messiah
and of His witnesses had its prototype in Israel's
rejection of Moses, the divinely-appointed de
liverer and law-giver. St. Paul traces the
outline of the history in order to prove that
in earlier deliverances, as now in the redemp
tion wrought by Jesus the Messiah, all was
the direct outcome of the divine working.
With David, the kingly type of the Messiah,
the review of the past significantly breaks off.
For our present purpose it must suffice to
select for consideration three of the character
istic points in the teaching of the sermon.
(1) The Passion and the Resurrection. The
rejection of Jesus by the rulers of Israel is
insisted on here, as in the discourses of St. Peter,
which we reviewed in the last lecture. It could
not but be a commonplace of the Christian
evangelist. Here too, as there, we find an
allusion to that passage in Deuteronomy (xxi.
23) which to a Jew invested the cross with the

1 84 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
horrors of the divine curse. But the manner of
the reference is not the same in the two speeches.
The words in the Pauline sermon are : "When
they [i.e. those who had asked Pilate that he
should be slain] had fulfilled all things that
were written of him, they took him down from
the tree, and laid him in a tomb " {v. 29). The
burial (comp. 1 Cor. xv. 4), as well as the
"hanging on the tree," is here included in the
scope of the allusion. And further, it is the
enemies of the Lord who are here said to have
laid Him in the tomb1 — a statement clearly at
variance with the history as given alike by the
Synoptists and by St. John. Had this version
of the story of the Saviour's burial met us in a
speech of St. Peter, it could not but have cast a
serious suspicion on the fidelity of the record.
St. Peter must have known all the history of the
day of the Passion far too well to be tempted
1 It is grammatically possible to suppose that the subject of KaBeXdvres
. . . '4Bt)Kav is indefinite ("men took him down . . . and laid him in a
tomb"). But (1) this construction appears to be exceedingly harsh
when the series of participles and indicatives (w. 27 f.), all referring to
the enemies of the Lord, is observed ; (2) the following words 6 Si Bebs
ijyeipev k.t.X. seem intended to introduce and emphasize the contrast
between the action of God and the action of the Jewish rulers (comp.
e.g. ii. 23 f., iii. 15).

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 185
to manipulate any part of it so as to bring it
into conformity with a passage of the Old Testa
ment. The case is otherwise with St. Paul.
Doubtless he was familiar with the main out
line of the events of the Passion ; but it is by
no means inconceivable that he was ignorant
of the details of the burial of the Lord. St.
Luke in the Gospel tells us explicitly of the
part in the burial taken by Joseph of Arimatha^a;
and it seems, therefore, probable that, when here
he incorporates in his other Book a different
account, we have a sign that he is following
closely the report of St. Paul's actual words.
The central fact of the Resurrection is in
sisted on here, as in St. Peter's discourses.
Both speakers are represented as regarding it
as the reversal, through God's act, of Israel's
rejection. Both speakers are represented as
citing what must have been a loctis classicus
with the heralds of the risen Christ — the six
teenth Psalm. But there are clear differences
'between the Petrine and the Pauline witness.
St. Paul here allows to those who were Apostles
before him an office in which he could not
himself share. They were the primary wit-

1 86 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
nesses of the Resurrection ; for they, unlike St.
Paul, held converse with the risen Lord among
the familiar scenes of earth. Doubtless St.
Paul himself believed — nay, he knew — that he
had seen the Lord ; but his sight of the risen
Saviour was different from the sight of Him
vouchsafed to the older Apostles. To have
explained the nature of his own testimony
would have been to draw off the minds of his
hearers to a personal history ; he therefore
rests the authentication of his Gospel of the
Resurrection on the witness of the original
companions of our Lord. When this is borne
in mind, our present passage is seen to be in
close harmony with the evidence of the Resur
rection as given in i Corinthians xv. Again, the
aspect of the Resurrection on which St. Paul
is represented as dwelling here differs from
that which is prominent in the Petrine speeches.
Through the Resurrection the Holy One was
rescued from a lasting experience of the grave.
He should "no longer return into corruption'"
— to the dishonour and nothingness of the
tomb. He had had part in it. He should
now have part in it no more. Though the

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 187
language is wholly different, the thought is
precisely that of the Epistle to the Romans
(vi. 9) : " Christ being raised from the dead
dieth no more ; death no more hath dominion
over him." St. Peter dwelt on the majesty of
the risen Jesus. St. Paul emphasizes the
thought of His life — His life, which cannot
henceforth know death.
(2) The consideration of the next point in
the speech — its witness to the Lord's Person —
in part, at any rate, explains St. Paul's position
as to the Resurrection. As long before at
Damascus, so here, the Apostle insists on the
divine Sonship. But, we ask, in what exact
connexion ? The passage runs thus : " We
bring you good tidings of the promise made
unto the fathers, how that God hath fulfilled
the same [unto us and1] unto our children, in
1 So I venture to restore the text. The reading (TavTrjv b Bebs €K-
wewX-fipoiKev TolsTiKVois tjh&v), "which alone has any adequate authority"
(Westcott and Hort, Introduction, Notes on Select Readings, p. 95),
cannot possibly represent what St. Luke intended to write. The
simplest solution of the difficulty seems to me to suppose that here, as
elsewhere in the Acts (see pp. 81 ff, 284), something has dropped out, and
to read eKwewXrfpwKev \i]iuv Kal] rots t4kvols T]p.wv. Compare especially
ii. 39 (vfuv ydp iuTiv 7} ^7ra-y7e\£a Kal rols t4kvois Ofiwf), Pss. Sol. viii.
39 (ijfuv Kal tols t4kvols t^&v 7} evSoKia els Tbv aliova) ; see also Matt.
xxvii. 25, Luke xix. 44, xxiii. 28. The phrase belongs to a type

1 88 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
that he raised up Jesus ; as in the second Psalm
also it is written, Thou art my Son, this day
have I begotten thee. And as concerning that
he raised him up from the dead ... he hath
spoken on this wise, I will give you the holy
mercies of David, which are sure" {vv. 32 ff.).
Here there are two "raisings up" spoken of, both
of which are connected with prophecy. The
latter is the raising up from the dead ; the former
is the raising up to activity, the bringing into the
sphere of the world's history.1 With the former
is connected " the promise to David," already
referred to in the speech {v. 23), "I will raise
up thy seed after thee" (2 Sam. vii. 12). And
in relation to it are the words of the Psalm ful
filled, "This day have I begotten thee," words
the primary and historical application of which
was to the day when the theocratic king was
common in the Old Testament, e.g. Gen. xxxi. 16, Deut. v. 29,
xxix. 29.
1 "The promise made unto the fathers" (v. 32) refers rather to the
sending of the Messiah than to the Resurrection. Moreover, this allusion
to ' ' the promise " connects #.32 with v. 23, which deals with the Saviour's
entrance upon His ministry. For this sense of apao-Trjcrai. compare iii.
22, 26, vii. 37; v. 30 (ijyeipev) ; and in' the LXX. e.g. 1 Sam. ii. 35,
2 Sam. xii. 21, Jer. xxiii. 4. The addition of 4k veKpuv (v. 34) differen
tiates the simple dvao-rricras of ?>. 32 from the dviaTt)tsev oiv. 34 ; compare
vv. 22, 30,

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 189
anointed, when he entered into a new relation
to Jehovah, a relation of affiance and obedience
on the one side, of fatherly care and guidance
on the other. To this "to-day" of the king's
anointing, the analogue in the earthly history of
the Lord Jesus was the hour when He was
endowed with the Father's Spirit, and greeted
by the Father's voice, "Thou art my Son."1
At the Baptism, before the eyes of Israel, and
for the work of the ministry, God "raised up
Jesus." It was His birthday into the new life
of Messianic service and of Messianic Sonship.
Death seemed to enter in and destroy this
relationship to the Heavenly Father. It was
not so. Death was with the Lord Jesus only a
brief parenthesis. By the Resurrection it was
proved that the covenant with David and his
seed was sure and abiding {rd Saia AaveiS Ta -mo-Td,
v. 34) ; and that this relation between the living
Father and the living Son had not been, and
could not be, broken by death. Thus this
passage of the Pauline sermon is not at variance
1 As early as the time of Justin (Dial. 88, 103) the words of the
voice from Heaven were assimilated to the words of the Psalm ; com
pare Westcott and Hort, Introduction, Notes on Select Readings, p. 57 ;
Resch, Ausscrcanonischc Paralleltexte . . . zu Lucas, pp. 20 ff.

igo HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
with the Apostle's words to the Roman Church
(i. 3 f.) — "Who was born of the seed of David
according to the flesh, who was declared to be
the Son of God with power, according to the
spirit of holiness, by the resurrection of the
dead." The teaching of the former passage is
presupposed in the latter. In the sermon the
Sonship, which was demonstrated anew by the
Resurrection, is carried backwards so as to
include the whole of the active ministry of the
Redeemer, In this discourse in the synagogue then we
listen to St. Paul asserting one aspect of that
divine Sonship of Jesus Christ with the pro
clamation of which he had, in the synagogues
of Damascus, begun his ministry. He insists
on what we may venture to call an official Son-
ship, a Sonship, that is, revealed under the
earthly conditions of the Lord's ministry. The
resurrection to a deathless life, the Apostle
teaches, manifested this Sonship as an abid
ing fact in the eternity to come. From the
Epistles it is clear that St. Paul drew from the
premises which he here asserts the conclusion
which is the faith of the Catholic Church. The

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 191
Sonship which did not end with the earthly
ministry did not begin with the earthly ministry.
The Sonship manifested in the visible order
revealed a relation to God which, acknow
ledging to the full the inadequacy of human
language, we call an essential Sonship. " When
the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his
Son " (Gal. iv. 4). He whom God did not
spare for man's sake was " his own Son "
(Rom. viii. 32). The Sonship is eternal and
unique.1 (3) Lastly, St. Paul draws out for his hearers
the issue of Christ's redemptive work on earth
— -" By him every one that believeth is justified
from all things, from which ye could not be
justified in the law of Moses" {v. 39). He
offers them in Christ the solution of the great
problem which had often perplexed the devout
Jew. It is impossible to read the Epistle to the
Romans (especially the seventh and eighth
1 In relation to the " theology " of the Pauline sermon, the passages
in the Pauline Epistles which speak of " the Son ' are full of instruction
— 1 Thess. i. 10, I Cor. i. 9, xv. 28, 2 Cor. i. 19, Gal. i. 16, ii. 20,
iv. 4, 6, Rom. i. 3 (6 wpoewy\yyelXaTo . wepl tov vlov ai'roG), 9,
v. 10, viii. 3, 29, 32, Eph. iv. 13, Col. i. 13.

i92 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
chapters) without being convinced that in the
Pharisaic period of his life the Apostle had
himself dwelt in the shadow of those awful
questionings and uncertainties — How shall
sinful man be at peace with God ? How can he
look for a sentence of acquittal from a just and
all-seeing Judge ? To some the hope of justi
fication through obedience to the law did not
seem impossible. Thus in the Apocalypse of
Baruch (li. 3) God is represented as speaking
of " the glory of those who have now been
justified in my law" — "justified in the law," it
is, we notice, precisely the phrase which St.
Paul here uses (eV v6\iw Mcovo-ecos SiKaiaiOfjvao).
On the other hand, the author of the Second
Book of Esdras shews that anxious and wistful
misgivings forced themselves into the heart
of Israelites who realized the sinfulness and
the spiritual impotence of man — " For if thou
hast a desire to have mercy upon us, then shalt
thou be called merciful, to us, namely, that
have no works of righteousness. For the just,
which have many good works laid up with thee,
shall for their own deeds receive reward. . . .
In this, O Lord, thy righteousness and thy

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 193
goodness shall be declared, if thou be merciful
unto them which have no store of good works "
(viii. 32 ff). Nay, in that same remarkable
book we have a distinct foreshadowing of that
conception of faith, as the means whereby man
on his part puts himself in contact with the
divine compassion, which is so familiar to us in
the teaching of St. Paul : " Every one that
shall be saved, and shall be able to escape by
his works, or by faith, whereby he hath believed
. . . shall see my salvation in my land " (ix. 7).
Of this supreme problem then St. Paul offers
to his fellow-Israelites at Antioch a solution, at
once authoritative and historical, in the Messiah,
the Son of God, who died and was raised by
God from death, " who . . . was raised for our
justification" (Rom. iv. 25).
For our present purpose three further points
in regard to St. Paul's teaching here claim atten
tion : — (1) There is, as has already appeared,
evidence enough to shew that a religious Jew
would not be unfamiliar with the vital subject
here dealt with, and that the terms which St.
Paul here uses would be intelligible to him.
(2) It would not be easy to find other words in
o

194 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
which St. Paul's doctrine of justification could
be so briefly and so forcibly stated. To each
phrase and to each turn of a phrase a real
parallel can be found in the Epistles of St. Paul,
and yet I venture to say that the freedom and
naturalness of their combination at once refutes
the suggestion that we have here a mosaic of
Pauline expressions put together even by a
skilful and sympathetic student of the Apostle's
writings. (3) And there is another point lurking
in the background. In the immediate sequel
St. Paul warns his hearers, "lest that come
upon you which is spoken in the prophets"
{v. 40). The reference, it will be observed, is
general ; but out of the prophetic literature one
passage — a passage from Habakkuk (i. 5) —
is chosen as a specimen. Why this special
choice ? Why out of all possible passages is this
selected? Is it not because his words in the
immediately preceding context — "every one
that believeth is justified "—had led St. Paul to
quote in the actual speech, or at least had
recalled to his mind, that one of his two great
proof texts from the Old Testament on the
subject of justification which comes from

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 195
Habakkuk (ii. 4) — "The just shall live by
faith" (Rom. i. 17, Gal. iii. 11)? The same
prophet who, as interpreted by St. Paul, tells
of the vital energy of faith, is called upon here
to pronounce the condemnation of unbelief. If
you agree with me in this explanation of the
choice of this particular prophetic warning, you
will allow that we have a trace of Pauline
thought so delicate and so unobtrusive that it
can only point to the conclusion that here we
have a very close report of St. Paul's words.
2. We turn in the second place to St.
Paul's witness to the pagan world.
In his long career as "the Apostle of the
nations " St. Paul must often have addressed
heathen audiences. Of such speeches two
specimens are given in the Acts. The choice of
the speech at Athens — addressed to " Greeks,"
to " the wise" (Rom. i. 14) — needs no comment.
But why was the speech at Lystra, so special
in its circumstances and aims, chosen as
illustrative of his mode of appeal to average
men from the pagan world ? Its selection, I
venture to think, confirms the opinion that St.

1 96 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Luke's authority for the Pauline speeches was
St. Paul himself. Among the many strange
episodes in that great missionary life, the
events at Lystra were not the least startling.
It appealed to St. Paul's grave sense of humour,
that he of all men in the world should have
been mistaken for one of the gods, and have
scarcely been able to restrain his would-be
devotees from offering sacrifice to him. Here
was indeed a travesty of his own words, " All
things to all men." The scene and the words
which he then spoke stood out in his memory
clear and sharply defined.
(i.) The speech at Lystra (xiv. 15-17) is
brief and simple. It has but one main thought
— the witness of nature to "the living God."
In one of his Epistles St. Paul reminds the
converts from paganism to whom he is writing
how, "when [they] were Gentiles, [they] were
led away unto those dumb idols, howsoever
[they] might be led " (1 Cor. xii. 2). At Lystra
he had, as its unwilling victim, to deal with one
of those whimsical gusts of superstition to which
he seems to refer in his letter. He endeavoured

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 197
to lay the storm of enthusiasm by assuring
the people that he and his companion were
" men of like nature " to them, and brought to
them "good news," calling on them to "turn
from these vain things unto the living God."
The language of the Pauline speech, it will be
noticed, is singularly parallel to the words with
which St. Paul describes the beginning of his
work at Thessalonica : " What manner of
entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned
unto God from idols, to serve a living and
true God" (i Thess. i. 9). The description
in the Acts of St. Paul's primary appeal to
Gentiles and that in the Epistle are in complete
accord. "The living God," to whom St. Paul
invites his hearers to turn, is the Creator of
" the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all
that in them is" {v. 15). It is true that "in
the generations gone by" (eV rais Trapmyyiikvais
yeveals ; comp. Eph. iii. 5> eTepais yeveais) it
seemed that God had left " all the nations "
to think and act as they would. Yet, even in
those "a^onian periods" of silence (Rom. xvi.
25), "he left not himself without witness, in
that he did good, and gave you from heaven

198 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts
with food and gladness " {v. 1 7).
There is nothing more remarkable, from
a literary point of view, about St. Paul's
Epistles than the absence from them of any
sign that he appreciated the beauties of the
world. Metaphors drawn from the stadium,
the camp, the world of civic life, are frequent
in his writings, and often elaborate. But we
find in his Epistles no parables of nature which
imply a sympathetic insight into the wonders
of the visible order. The scenery through
which the traveller passed has left no trace in
his writings. The thoughts of God and of
man which filled his mind allowed little place
for reflexion on the world without.1 When,
however, we read the speech at Lystra, our
first impression is that the words here put
into St. Paul's mouth are unlike the utterances
of the real St. Paul. They seem to be the,
joyous outpouring of the mind of one who
found a solace and an inspiration in the poetry
of nature. But when we look beneath the
surface, we become conscious that we are
1 Comp. Jowett, The Epistles of St. Paul, ii. p. 455.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 199
mistaken. For in the first place, the words
are not a free and spontaneous tribute to the
beauty of God's world. They are echoes of
the Psalms of Creation. Almost every word
is derived from the Old Testament. There
appeals to us here, as in the Epistles of St. Paul,
not a poet -interpreter of nature, but a student
of the Scriptures, who could bring out of that
treasury thoughts and words to meet the
sudden call. And in the second place, it
is the prophet and not the literary artist
who speaks. The main thought is not the
splendour or the loveliness of the natural world,
but the impartial beneficence of God (comp.
Matt. v. 45), the simple idea of the ancient
Jewish Grace : " Blessed art Thou, Jehovah our
God, king of the world, who causest bread to
come forth from the earth."1 " I have always
benefited you," God is represented in the
Apocalypse of Baruch (xiii. 12) as saying to
the "peoples and nations," "and you have
always denied the beneficence."
It is important for our purpose to compare
the teaching here put into St. Paul's mouth
1 Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, i. p. 684.

200 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
with the teaching on the same subject found
in his Epistles.
{a) There are two views of nature, both of
which appeal to us according to our varying
moods. We exult in its beauty and its gracious-
ness. We are saddened by its strange and
awful tragedies. These two views are not
mutually exclusive ; they are rather comple
mentary. Both find expression in St. Paul's
writings. On the one hand, he looks out on
" the creation subjected to vanity." "The whole
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together
until now." It is true that the sorrow which
we trace everywhere is no hopeless, purpose
less misery ; it is the pangs of birth which shall
issue in a fuller and a higher life, the pledge
of a complete redemption. But "the deliver
ance from the bondage of corruption " and the
entrance " into the liberty of the glory of the
children of God " are not yet (Rom. viii. 19 ff.).1
On the other hand, though, as we have already
seen, the Apostle never dwells on the beauty of
the world, and though he characteristically and
habitually lives among thoughts suggested by
1 Comp. Bishop Westcott, The Gospel of Life, pp. 240 ff.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 201
God's grace in redemption rather than by His
bounty in creation, yet he enforces the lesson
that " God giveth us richly all things to enjoy "
(1 Tim. vi. 17). Hence, at least in part,
springs his abiding spirit of thankfulness and
contentment {e.g. i Thess. v. 17, Phil. iv. 4 ff,
10-20). To the healthy mind of St. Paul
God's creation is a good and happy world.
The Apostle makes the words of the Psalm
his own : " The earth is the Lord's, and the
fulness thereof" (1 Cor. x. 26). "God created
[meats] to be received with thanksgiving by
them that believe and know the truth. For
every creature of God is good, and nothing
is to be rejected, if it be received with thanks
giving" (1 Tim. iv. 3 f). The words of the
Pauline speech, echoing the fervour of the
Psalter, are the vivid presentation of thoughts
which find an occasional and more restrained
expression among the arguments and exhorta
tions of the Epistles.
{b) St. Paul is represented in the Acts as
leading his hearers at Lystra upwards through
nature to God. The lavish bounty of nature
is a " witness " to the goodness of the Creator,

202 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
and constitutes a claim on His part to man's
undivided allegiance. The one passage in St.
Paul's Epistles in which he deals at length
with the state of the heathen world supplies
a close parallel to his alleged utterance here.
" The invisible things of him since the creation
of the world are clearly seen, being perceived
through the things that are made, even his
everlasting power and divinity ; that they may
be without excuse : because that, knowing God,
they glorified him not as God, neither gave
thanks ; but became vain in their reasonings,
and their senseless heart was darkened . . .
[They] changed the glory of the incorruptible
God for the likeness of an image of corruptible
man, and of birds, and four-footed beasts, and
creeping things" (Rom. i. 20 ff). In both
passages, it will be observed, the visible world
is regarded as a revelation of God. In the
Epistle, indeed, it is viewed rather as a mani
festation of His awful power ; in the speech
rather as a manifestation of His generous
goodness ; but the words, " neither gave
thanks," in the former shew that the idea
of the divine beneficence, emphasized in the

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 203
speech, is not wholly absent from the words
of the Epistle. In both passages men's
blindness towards the witness of nature is
connected with their degraded conception of
the Divine; they worshipped "vain things,"
and so, becoming assimilated to the objects
of their worship, they themselves " became
vain" (comp. Eph. iv. 17).
One further point in regard to the speech at
Lystra calls for remark. There is not a single
word in it from beginning to end which stamps
it as Christian. The reference, indeed, to God's
apparent abandonment of "all the nations" "in
the generations gone by " implies on the speaker's
part a belief that a new epoch had now begun.
But nothing is said as to what is the dividing
line between the past and the present. There
is no hint of the work of Jesus Christ or of His
expected return (contrast 1 Thess. i. 9 f). The
words which the historian here puts into the
mouth of St. Paul might be, in fact, the words
of any pious Jew who regarded himself as com
missioned by God to make proselytes from
idolatry. The circumstances, it is true, when
we consider them, amply explain this remark-

204 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
able reticence. The speaker's aim for the
moment was not to evangelize, but to prevent
an act of idolatry. Moreover the narrative
plainly implies that the scene was full of con
fusion — " scarce restrained they the multitude " ;
doubtless the speech was often interrupted and
perhaps ended abruptly. But a study of the
apocryphal Acts shews us that no romancer
would have, been so self-restrained and courage
ous as to invent a Pauline speech destitute of
any reference to Christ and Christ's work (see
e.g. Acta Pauli et Theclae, .17). The silence of
St. Paul's speech at Lystra as to these essential
topics is a very strong proof of its truthfulness.
(ii.) The right understanding of St. Paul's
speech at Athens (xvii. 22-31) depends largely
on the interpretation of the circumstances which
led up to it, and of the occasion of its delivery
(xvii. 16-21).
The centre of the busy life of Athens was
the Agora. Here day after day St. Paul was
to be found reasoning with any who " happened
to be there." Among these, the historian tells
us parenthetically, were "some of the Epicurean

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 205
and Stoic philosophers." Opinion generally
about him was divided. Some were content to
wonder what could be the meaning of " this glib
adventurer's " words {ri dv deXoi 6 o-Trepppkoyos 1
ovtos Xeyew). Others started the half-mocking
theory that he was a Socrates redivivus2 intro
ducing strange or foreign deities, a new god of
healing, 'Ir/o-ovs, and a new companion goddess,
' Avdaracrts. 1 " Sine dubio hoc ex ipso ore Atheniensium auctor excepit " (Blass
in loco). If for "auctor" we substitute " S. Paulus," the words are
probably true. St. Paul was struck with the slang term by which
the Athenians described him (comp. t&v vwepXtav dwoo-ToXav, 2 Cor.
xi. 5, xii. 11), and St. Luke learned it from him. The word crwep/j.oX6yos
is used of an adventurer who picks up a "hand to mouth" living;
comp. e.g. Dem. de Cor. 269. 19, awepfwXbyos, weplTpi/j,/ia dyopds: Philo
Leg. ad Caium 30 (ii. 576, ed. Mangey), 'EXIkuvi t$ ciwarplSri, SovXcp
ffwep/xoXbyuj, wepiTpLfi/AaTi, Kal 'AweXXrj tlvT rpayipStp, Ss . . . iKawrjXevtre
tt]v iopav, ^copos Si yevbfxevos iwl rty <tkt]Vt]V wapyXBev. The language
of such persons was, and is, plentiful and (on occasion) low ; comp.
Plutarch ii. 664 A, ravra fiiv weplepya Kal cweppLoXoyiKd : id. ii. 456 C,
dKbXaffTa Kal wiKpd Kal cwepfioXoyiKa p-rj/xara. Hence the following
definitions : Elym. Magnum, 6 evTeXys Kal evKaraifrpbvqTos AvBpuwos
Kal tatiis dwb t&v dXXoTplwv 6ia£u>v : Hesych., (pXvapos : Suidas, evpvXoyos
aKpiri/AvBos : Onom. Vetus, XdXos. For such Jewish adventurers com
pare xix. 13 (t&v wepiepxofiivuv 'lovSaiav e^opKurruv) and the description
of Simon (viii. 9 ff. ) and of Elymas (xiii. 6 ff. ).
2 Compare Xen. Memor. i. I, ddtKei J^WKpaTTjs . . . Kaivd Saifibvia
elo~(pip<ov : Plato Apol. xii. (24 B), 'ZtoKpaTq <f>r}(rlv dbiKelv . . Beoiis ovs
t) wbXis voi*.l£ei. oi vofil^ovTa (repa Si Saifibvia Kaivd.
3 The name 'I^croOs, otherwise unintelligible, would be naturally
connected by the Athenians with taais (Ionic (ijtris) and 'Iairii ('lyo-ii),

206 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
At length a crisis came. The frequent
dialogues in the Agora led up to the long
address which formed an epoch in St. Paul's
missionary life. Who asked for this exposition
of St. Paul's teaching ? Where was it delivered,
and before whom ? It is impossible here fully
to discuss the various answers which have been
given to these questions. It must suffice briefly
to say that there appears to me to be nothing
in the narrative or in the speech itself to support,
the goddess of healing and health (e.g. Ar. Plut. 701). We may
compare the paronomasia in Acts ix. 34, laral o-e 'Irjaovs Xpiarbs.
For 'Avdaraais compare dvaarar^ipia (Hesych. ) in the sense of sacrifices
offered on recovery from sickness. The personification would hardly
seem strange to men accustomed to the personification of 'Tyleia
(see Frazer, Pansanias, ii. pp. 277 ff. ). This interpretation of the
words 'L)i7oCs and avdaraais would be confirmed in the minds of the
Athenians, if they caught the words aun-qpia and aurr/p in St. Paul's
teaching. The latter was a title of Asclepios (e.g. C.I.G. 1222, 1755 ;
comp. Thraemer in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl. II. ii. 1677. 47 ff.),
and the term aurrfpia denoted sacrifices for recovery (Herod, i. 10).
I am indebted to Mr. A. B. Cook for the following remarks : " The
Ionic form Tijcni was doubtless known at Athens from such passages as
Herondas iv. 6 (cult of 'I^crci in Kos) :
HavaKTj re Krjwub re Klrjatb xa^Pot"
It might be worth while considering whether there was any confusion
with a deity far better known than 'laaib, I mean Isis. She too was a
health goddess ; in fact her name was later derived from Hebr. iasa =
'salvavit' (Roscher, Lex. d. Mythologie, II. i. 522. 42). She bore
the title aiireipa (ibid. 46), and was credited with the discovery of the
drug dBavaala (Diod. i. 25)."

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 207
much indeed to refute, the theory that St. Paul
stood before the Court of the Areopagus in the
Stoa Basileios, whether {a) as one arraigned
for a preliminary investigation before a religious
tribunal, or {b) as one brought by the philoso
phers before the authorities of the city, that so
the exposition of his doctrine might receive a
higher importance, or again, {c) as a teacher
appearing before a board entrusted with the
regulation of the lectures of the university.1
1 (a) The view that St. Paul was brought before the Court of the
Areopagus has been a favourite one since early days. Thus Chrysostom
(Migne, P. G. Ix. 268) says : 1770^ avrbv iwl rbv "Apeiov Hdyov, oi>x uxrre
p,aBetv dXX' (bare KoXaaar PvBa al (poviKal SUai. In recent times this
view has been maintained in a somewhat different form, viz. : that St.
Luke describes here a "preliminary investigation" (wpoSmaala), and
that iwl rbv "Apeiov Hdyov (v. 19, comp. v. 22) is equivalent to iwl ttjv
(SovXtjv rrjv e£ 'Apeiov Hdyov or iwl rrjv iv 'Apelip Udyip ^ovX-qv. So E.
Curtius (Die Stadtgeschichte von Athen, 1891, pp. 262 f. ) : The Apostle
" was led by those whom he had most bitterly irritated to the King's
Hall, where those cases which were to be decided by the Areopagus
were taken. . . Here it had first to be determined whether a charge
of introducing new deities was established ; and here the Apostle was
able, in front of the King's Hall, in the midst of the representatives of
the Areopagus, in the hearing of a great concourse of people, to make
the speech in which he refuted the charge." (b) Curtius, however,
soon modified his interpretation of the incident, and in his Paulus in
Athen (printed in his Gesammelte Abhandhmgen, 1894, ii. pp. 527 ff. )
he put forward another theory : "The report of a SiSaxh Kaivi] of quite
a peculiar kind spread ; the market-place was filled with an expectant
crowd of native Athenians and strangers, and the philosophers, who
were here the spokesmen, were impelled to measure swords with the

208 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
The historian himself explains the circumstances
of the speech with sufficient clearness. The
courteous request which called forth this speech.
he puts into the mouth, not of any official
persons, but of those whom in the Agora the
Apostle had already interested. He explains
the motive and the spirit of the request by a
reference to the passion for "telling or hearing
some new thing " which characterized all the
inhabitants of Athens. As the sequel of the
speech, he records not a judicial decision, how
ever informal, but a division of opinion. Some,
as St. Paul broke off, "were mocking" ; others
expressed a hope that they might again hear
the speaker discuss these matters. The speech
itself confirms what appears to be the natural
interpretation of the narrative. It is addressed
not to Areopagites (whether regarded as magis
trates or as university officials), but generally to
an Athenian audience {avSpes 'AOrjvaioi,, v. 22) ;
and it has nothing in it which suggests that it
teacher who had thus presented himself. In order to satisfy their
curiosity, they invite a fuller statement on Paul's part, and endeavour
to lend a higher significance to the expected speech by getting the
magistrates of the city to take part in the matter (^70701/ iwl rbv "Apeiov
wdyov) " (p. 528). (c) The third view mentioned in the text above
is that of Professor Ramsay (St. Paul the Traveller, pp. 243 ff. ).

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 209
is an apologia. The story of the speech, then,
as I read St. Luke's narrative, was simple and
natural. St. Paul for many days had dis
coursed with Athenians and with "strangers
sojourning there," as they came and went, amid
the bustle and concourse of the Agora. One day
some of those who had heard fragments of his
teaching, feeling a keener curiosity than the
rest as to his real meaning, wished to give him a
quieter hearing. " Taking hold of him " (comp.
ix. 27, xxiii. 19), that they might give kindly
guidance and help to one who was a stranger
and perhaps physically weak, they led him up
the steep stone steps which ascended from the
Agora to the Areopagus. On the way they
asked him to repeat to them in a more connected
form what he had often said in the Agora below.
The area of the summit is small. They made,
therefore, a circle round the Apostle, some
taking their place on the stone seats which
still surround the hill 1 ; and the speaker himself,
1 "A flight of fifteen or sixteen steps cut in the rock, but now
ruinous, leads up from the south-eastern side of the hill to a small
artificially levelled platform on the top of the hill, where there are
some remains of rock-hewn seats" (Frazer, Pausanias's Description
of Greece, ii. pp. 362 f.). P

210 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
naturally enough, "stood in the midst of the
Areopagus." Let us consider St. Paul's treatment in the
speech at Athens of three topics — the heathen
world and its idolatry, the doctrine of God, the
divine call to repentance.
{a) The Heathen World and its Idolatry,
In his Epistles St. Paul is silent as to the
aesthetic aspect of pagan worship. Of its sense
of awe, its solemnity, its stateliness, its poetic
interpretation of nature, its influence as a means
of artistic culture, its close relation to literatures
unsurpassed in strength and grace — of all this
St. Paul, as he reveals himself to us in his
letters, is absolutely unconscious. To his mind,
full of the sense of God's presence and power,
all this is as though it were not. At least for
the worship of the elements — "fire, or wind, or
swift air, or circling stars, or raging water, or
luminaries of heaven " — the writer of the Book
of Wisdom finds excuse. "If it was through
delight in their beauty that they took them to
be gods ... for these men there is but small
blame ; for they too peradventure do but go
astray while they are seeking God and desiring

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 211
to find him " (Wisd. xiii. 2-6). But the Apostle
of the Gentiles in his letters speaks of Gentile
idolatry as a system wholly degraded and wholly
degrading. They "changed the glory of the
incorruptible God for the likeness of an image
of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-
footed beasts, and creeping things. . . . They
exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and
worshipped and served the creature rather than
the Creator" (Rom. i. 23 ff). At Athens, if
anywhere in the world, some relaxation of this
stern unbending attitude might have been par
doned. At least a Gentile historian, if he were
drawing on his own imagination, would have
let slip, we should suppose, some expression of
appreciation for the glories of Athenian art.
But it is not so. Neither in the narrative nor
in the speech is there a single word which is
at variance with what we know to have been
St. Paul's view of idolatry. As he wandered
about the city and " scrutinized the objects of
[its] worship" (xvii. 23), he was always and
everywhere moved to a deep sense of exaspera
tion. " His spirit was provoked {irapco^vveTo)
within him, as he beheld the city full of idols."

212 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
" Have we ever realised the force of that single
word, with which the historian describes the
impression left on the Apostle's mind by this
far-famed city ? Gazing on the most sublime
and beautiful creations of Greek art, the master
pieces of Pheidias and Praxiteles, he has no
eye for their beauty or their sublimity. He
pierces through the veil of the material and the
transitory ; and behind this semblance of grace
and glory the true nature of things reveals itself.
To him this chief centre of human culture and
intelligence, this Eye of Greece, mother of arts
And eloquence,
appears only as KaTe[Sm\os, overrun with idols,
beset with phantoms which mislead, and vanities
which corrupt." a The speech itself is in com
plete harmony with the narrative. Its opening
words, though they are often interpreted as
expressive of commendation, are in reality
words of rebuke not wholly unmingled with
contempt — " In all things I perceive that ye are
very superstitious " {d>s SeoaiSaifioveo-Tepovs2). In
1 Bishop Lightfoot, Cambridge Sermons, pp. 302 f.
2 Theophrastus draws a contemptuous picture of the SeiaiSaifuw,
and defines Seiai8ai/j.ovla as SeMa wpbs rb Sai/ibviov. Menander wrote

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 213
no other sense could the word be understood
by Athenians, who would instinctively recall
the literary associations of the word, still less
by the philosophers among St. Paul's audience,
who themselves despised and ridiculed the
popular religion, to which, nevertheless, from
motives of convenience they conformed.
On two grounds St. Paul is here represented
as condemning idolatry. In th(e first place the
shrines, local habitations of deities, and the
material cults connected with them, were in
a comedy called SeiaiSal/iwv. In Aristotle Politics v. 1 1 SeioiSai/wvia
is regarded as commonly open to the charge of " stupidity " (dBeXrepia).
Comp. Polyb. vi. 56, Sokei rb wapd tois dXXois dvBpiliwois
oveidii^bpiepov, rovro avvixeiv rd '¥oi[xal(jiV wpdyfiara, Xiyw Si tt}v
SeiaiSai/jiovtav. See Jebb's Theophrastus, pp. 263 f. , Wetstein ad locum,
and Field, Notes on Translation of the New Testament, pp. 125 f.
In point of fact, the words 10s SeiaiSainovearipovs give, in a form as
little offensive as possible, St. Paul's view of Athenian idolatry already
noticed by the historian (v. 16) — wapioi-vvero rb wvev/ia abrov iv
avrip Bewpovvros KarelSioXov ovaav tt]v wbXiv. Field, however, thinks
that the comparative serves to soften the censure — "somewhat,"
"rather'' — quoting Diog. Laert. ii. 132, fy Si wus Kal r)pip.a Kal
SeiaiSai/xovio-Tepos, and Hor. Sat. i. 9. 71, "sum paulo infirmior" ; but
in the former of these passages the -fipe/xa and in the latter the paulo
indicate the slightness of the quality referred to, and give a special
tone to the comparative. For the quasi - superlative force of the
comparative, compare v. 21, $ Xiyeiv ti ^ aKoveiv n Kaivbrepov. On
the other hand, the u>s does appear to have a mitigating force ; it brings
out the fact that the word SeiaiSaiixovearipovs expresses the speaker's
own impression.

214 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
flagrant contradiction to the true conception of
God as the Creator, and therefore as the Sove
reign Lord, of all things. Here, at least in
theory, the Stoics were at one with the Christian
Apostle. Secondly, it was a commonplace with
Greek poets that men are "the offspring of God."
That men, therefore, should teach that the Father
of men — the Divine Being — " is like unto gold,
or silver, or stone, graven by art and device of
man," is a self-inflicted insult. The times when
such conceptions and practices prevailed could
only be regarded as "times of ignorance"
(comp. Eph. iv. 18) — ignorance of God, of the
true meaning of the world, and of the true
dignity of man (comp. Rom. i. 24 ff). With
this verdict of " ignorance " on the Gentile
world St. Paul's teaching in the Epistles corre
sponds. In the Epistle to the Romans (i. 21 ;
comp. v. 19), it is true, the Apostle speaks of
the heathen as "knowing God" {yvovTes tov deov).
But this "knowledge" appears to mean a re
cognition of the existence of a divine Power
which, through their own fault, did not issue in
an apprehension of the true attributes of God
and of His claims on man, and which was

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 215
barren of result in true worship and true thank
fulness. "They knew God," but "they refused
to have God in their knowledge" {v. 28).
Elsewhere, however, without qualification, St.
Paul speaks, as he is represented in the Acts
as speaking at Athens, of the "ignorance" of
the nations — "the nations which know not
God" (1 Thess. iv. 5, Gal. iv. 8); "the world
through its wisdom knew not God" (1 Cor. i.
21); Christian converts must remember the
time when they were " without God {dOeoi) in
the world" (Eph. ii. 12).
In the Epistles the Apostle draws a still
darker picture of idolatry. It was hopeless in
face of death (1 Thess. iv. 13, Eph. ii. 12). In
the sphere of social and personal life it bore its
natural fruit in a luxuriant harvest of vile licen
tiousness (1 Thess. iv. 5, Rom. i. 24 ff, Col. iii.
5 ff, Eph. iv. 19). Behind it there lay a mys
terious and awful background, the working and
the worship of the powers of evil (1 Cor. x. 20).
Of these hideous traits in the portraiture of
idolatry nothing is said in the Pauline speech
at Athens. The omission is natural and true
to the realities of a missionary's work. The

216 . HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Apostle stood before the Athenians as an
ambassador. If faithfulness to the sovereign
Power which sends him is one supreme char
acteristic of the ambassador's office, the object
of his mission is to conciliate. He must win,
before he delivers in the fulness of its severity
his message of rebuke.
One ray of light in the blackness of idolatry
which surrounded him at Athens the Apostle
discerned — "a beam in darkness; let it grow."
If he had no eye for the triumphs of Athenian
art, the altar " to the unknown God " {dyvwo-Tw
dew) arrested his attention. Doubtless it was
in reality the outcome of " superstition " {Setai-
Saifiov(a). In some visitation of plague or famine
it was not obvious what god needed propitia
tion. Fear suggested an expedient. An altar
was erected to the god, whosoever he might be,
whose hand was heavy on the people.1 No
name could be assigned to him ; the inscription
must needs be, "To the unknown God." But
to St. Paul those two pathetic words of anxious,
scrupulous ignorance seemed to reveal an un-
1 Compare Diog. Laert. i. io. no, Epimen. Bbeiv np wpoo-b,KovTi
6e$. On altars to unknown gods see Frazer, Pausanias, ii. pp. 33 ff.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 217
conscious recognition of the one Creator and
Father of all ; they witnessed to a blind
"groping" after Him who "is not far from
each one of us." He is eager to welcome an
act of unconscious worship, just as in the
Epistle to the Romans (ii. 14 ff. ; comp. ix.
30) he looks forward to that day "when God
shall judge the secrets of men " as a revelation
of lives ennobled by unconscious obedience to
the divine law.
This discussion of St. Paul's view as to the
attitude of "the nations" towards God natur
ally leads on to the consideration of the Apostle's
teaching in regard to God's attitude towards
"the nations." St. Paul, as he did his work as
Christ's herald among the heathen, must often
have been oppressed by anxious questionings
as to God's dealings, especially in the ages past,
with the world of heathenism, of which the
Evangelist could now only touch the fringe.
How could he justify to himself and to others
the divine ways ? St. Paul, of course, never
enters on a discussion of the origin of idolatry
in its different forms. Such an investigation
would have been alien to the age and to his own

2iS HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
habits of thought. He touches on the problem
incidentally, and under the necessary limitations
of his religious training and his own field of
observation. In the Epistles we find two anti
thetical lines of thought. On the one hand
there is a view— suggested largely by the sights
and tales, of heinous sin which must have made
up much of his experience in the cities and
villages of the Empire — which lays stress on
God's retributive justice. The heathen, deaf
to God's voice speaking to them in conscience,
"gave themselves up {eavToiis irapiSaKav) to
lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with
covetousness " (Eph. iv. 19). God set His seal
on their habitual action. " God gave them up
{irapiScuKev ainovs) in the lusts of their hearts
unto uncleanness " ; "God gave them up unto
passions of dishonour"; "God gave them up
unto a reprobate mind" (Rom. i. 24, 26, 28).
The pagan world lived under a sentence, on
God's side, of judicial abandonment. This
conception, explicitly stated in the Epistles,
appears, in its simplest form, and divested (as
would be natural) of its awful sternness, in the
brief address to the people of Lystra — "[God]

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 219
in the generations gone by suffered all the
nations to walk in their own ways" (xiv. 16).
But on the other hand there is another view
presented in St. Paul's Epistles which magnifies
the divine mercy. God, imperilling, as it were,
His character as absolutely holy, refrained
from visiting the sins of the heathen world with
a punishment commensurate with them, till the
discipline of judicial abandonment had done its
work, and "the fulness of time" came for His
secret purpose of universal redemption and
renewal to be revealed. The different elements
of thought which I have ventured thus to com
bine in a single statement are found scattered
throughout the Epistles—" God hath shut up
all unto disobedience, that he might have mercy
upon all" (Rom. xi. 32; comp. Gal. iii. 22);
" God purposed [Jesus Christ] to be a propitia
tion, through faith, by his blood, to shew his
righteousness, because of the passing over of
the sins done afore time {Sid ttjv irdpeo-iv t&v
irpoyeyovoTwv dfjiapTrj/Marayv), in the forbearance
(eV Trj dvoxv) of God ; for the shewing, I say,
of his righteousness at this present season "
(Rom. iii. 25 f.) ; "The revelation of the

220 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
mystery which hath been kept in silence through
times eternal, but now is manifested, and ... is
made known unto all the nations unto obedience
of faith" (Rom. xvi. 25 f.) ; "The mystery
of Christ, which in other generations was not
made known unto the sons of men, as it hath
now been revealed unto his holy apostles and
prophets in the Spirit ; to wit, that the Gentiles
are fellow -heirs, and fellow -members of the
body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in
Christ through the gospel " (Eph. iii. 4 ff. ;
comp. Eph. i. 9, iii. 9, Col. i. 25 ff). Cor
responding to this conception of the divine
dispensations we have the sentence in the
speech at Athens: ".The times of ignorance
therefore God overlooked {virepiSwv) ; but now
he declareth to men that they shall all every
where repent " {v. 30). The language and the
thought of these words are alike eminently
Pauline. The phrase " all men everywhere "
{¦n-dvTas TravTa%ov) belongs to a type familiar in
St. Paul's writings {e.g. 1 Cor. iv. 17, 2 Cor.
ix. 8, Eph. v. 20, Phil. i. 3). The " but now "
(ra vvv) draws the contrast between the past
characterized by silence on the divine side and

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 221
sin on man's side, and on the other hand the
present with revelation and redemption on God's
part and the possibilities of renewal for man
— a contrast to which St. Paul in his writings
habitually recurs {e.g. Rom. xvi. 26, Gal. iv. 9,
Eph. iii. 5, v. 8, Col. i. 26). Further, in the
great passage from Romans iii. quoted above
St. Paul asserts that the propitiation wrought
out by Christ, the final condemnation and re
moval of sin through the sacrifice of Himself,
was designed by God as a decisive vindication
of His .righteousness, a vindication which was
necessary because in His forbearance {iv rfj
dvoxf), not iv ttj %a/otTt) He had, without punish
ment or atonement, passed over {Sid rr/v irdpeaiv,
not Sid rr/v dcpeaiv) men's sins in the long epochs
of the past. The ideas of God's patience and
His apparent indifference to sin, emphasized in
the passage of the Epistle, find vivid and exact
expression in the statement of the Pauline
speech that " The times of ignorance God
overlooked." 1
1 With Acts xvii. 30 (vwepiduiv . . . rots dv&p&wois . . . p.eravoeiv)
compare Wisd. xi. 23, wapopq.s dfiaprrj/iara avBpdiwwv els fierdvoiav. The.
coincidence is too close to be accidental. The passage in Rom. i. deal
ing with the heathen world and the Pauline speeches in Acts xiv., xvii. ,

222 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
{b) The Doctrine of God.
The teaching of the speech which comes
under this head, so far as I have not anticipated
it in the previous section, may be conveniently
considered in relation to (i.) the unity of the
race ; (ii.) the unity of history ; (iii.) the unity
of human life.
(i.) The Doctrine of God and the Unity of
the Race. — God " made the world and all things
therein " {v. 24). " He made of one (ef ivos)
every nation of men " {v. 26). The speaker
had probably two special reasons for asserting
alike reflect the thoughts and to some extent the language of the Book
of Wisdom. The parallels between Rom. i. and Wisdom are given
at length in Sanday and Headlam's Romans, pp. 5 1 f. " While on
the one hand," to quote their summing up, " there can be no question
of direct quotation, on the other hand the resemblance is so strong
both as to the main lines of the argument (i. Natural religion discarded,
ii. idolatry, iii. catalogue of immorality) and in the details of thought
and to some extent of expression as to make it clear that at some
time in his life St. Paul must have bestowed upon the Book of Wisdom
a considerable amount of study. " Even in the report of the speeches
at Lystra and Athens contained in the Acts, condensed and (to some
extent) edited as that report must be, parallels with Wisdom of the
same kind as those noticed in Rom. i. reveal themselves. See, e.g.,
Acts xiv. 17 |] Wisd. xiii. lb; Acts xvii. 23, 30 1| Wisd. xiv. 22, xv.
1 1 ; Acts xvii. 24 || Wisd. xiii. 3 b, 4 b, 9 c ; Acts. xvii. 27 || Wisd. xiii.
6 c, 9 c ; Acts xvii. 29 || Wisd. xiii. 10, xv. 4 ; Acts xvii. 30 1| Wisd.
xi. 23. The existence of such a common literary characteristic as this
confirms the conclusion that the Epistle and the two Pauline speeches
are the production of the same mind.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 223
this doctrine. On the one hand, it negatived
the traditional boast of the Athenians that, as
avTo^doves, they were not as other men. On
the other hand, it coincided, so far at least as
its language was concerned, with the views of
the nobler Stoics of the period — views in which
they characteristically diverged from the position
of the Epicureans. The qualification in the
foregoing statement as to the Stoics will be
noted. The coincidence, however telling, could
only be momentary and superficial. For the
Stoic and the Christian doctrines rested on
different foundations. The Stoic based his
belief in the unity of the race on his assertion
of a common material origin, the Christian
teacher on his conviction that all things and all
men have their one source in a personal God
and Father. This seems to be the meaning of
the e£ ez^o?("of one"; comp. Hebr. ii. n) in
this passage. The reference is to the one
Creator Himself. This conception of God as
the source as well as the maker of the universe
is familiar to us in St. Paul's Epistles — "There
is one God, the Father, of whom (e'£ ov) are all
things" (1 Cor. viii. 6; comp. xi. 12, Rom.

224 HULSEAN LECTURES, lect.
xi. 36, Eph. iv. 6). A close parallel to the words
under discussion (notwithstanding difference of
expression) is found in Eph. iii. 14, "The Father
from whom every family in heaven and earth
is named" (e£ ov irao-a irarpid . . . 6vop,d£eTai). In
the Epistles, indeed,, the Apostle goes a stage
further, and traces this thought of the unity of
the race onward to its realization. Redemption
reaffirms the oneness of the nations. In Christ
the ideal becomes a practical reality. "There
can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be
neither bond nor free, there can be no male and
female; for ye are all one man in Christ Jesus"
(Gal. iii. 28; comp. e.g. Col. iii. 11, Eph. ii.
15 ff.). (ii.) The Doctrine of God and the Unity of
History. — " He made of one every nation of
men for to dwell on all the face of the earth,
determining their appointed seasons and the
bounds of their habitation" {v. 26). The history
of the world is the evolution of the Creator's
first purpose. The periods of that history —
the epochs of national progress and decline —
are not, as the Stoics taught, the outcome of
blind destiny. They subserve the divine will,

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 225
which is their source and law. So, I think, we
may draw out the meaning of the words, " de
termining their appointed seasons." In the
Pauline Epistles we have no precise parallel to
them, dealing (at least primarily), as they do,
with the history of the nations. But the same
conception of divinely ordained periods and
seasons is familiar to us in the Epistles in refer
ence to redemption—" When the fulness of the
time came, God sent forth his Son" (Gal. iv. 4) ;
"His good pleasure which he purposed in
him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the
seasons" (Eph. i. 9 f); "The dispensation of
the mystery which from all ages hath been
hid in God who created all things " (Eph.
iii. 9; comp. 1 Tim. ii. 6, vi. 15, Titus
i. 3). The Epistles agree with the speech in
sketching the outline of a divine philosophy
of history. (iii.) The Doctrine of God and the Unity of
Human Life. — " He is not far from each one of
•us : for in him we live and move and have our
being ; as certain even of your own poets have
said, For we are also his offspring" {vv. 27 f).
The fact that the speaker chooses a half verse
Q

226 HULSEAN LECTURES - lect.
of a Stoic poet 1 as typical of the recognition in
Greek poetry generally of the Fatherhood of
God, indicates that he has in his mind Stoic
language as to the nearness of God to man.
Such language was often noble and devout.
" No work on earth is wrought apart from Thee,
O God," says Cleanthes {Hymn to Zeus 15 f),
"nor in the divine vault of heaven, nor in the
sea." " God is near thee ; He is with thee ; He
is within," is a saying of Seneca {Ep. Mor. xii. 1).
But the language of Stoic devotion is robbed
of its beauty and meaning by Stoic dogma.
" God " is merely a synonym for " nature." He
"is at once universal matter and the creative
force which fashions matter into the particular
materials out of which things are made.2 " The
Christian preacher, appealing to their conven
tional language rather than to their formal
dogmas, strove to win the Stoics among his
audience. He would fain take them with him
as far as they could go. But in truth only by
a sacrifice of the principles of their philosophy
1 The precise words occur in Aratus Phenom. 5 ; comp. Cleanthes
Hymn to Zeus 4 (iK gov ykp yivos iafiAv).
- Zeller, The Stoics , Epicureans , and Sceptics, Eng. trans., p. 149.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 227
could they share his thoughts of God. For
Stoic theology (if the word may be used) was
a materialistic pantheism. To the Christian
teacher God was a Person ; and in regard to
the presence of God in creation, Christian
theology holds with equal firmness a belief in
the immanence of God in the world, and a belief
in the transcendence of God above the world.
The latter idea, the necessary corrective of the
former, is recognized in the Pauline speech
through the simple statement that God is the
Creator, the Lord of heaven and earth. The
doctrine of the divine transcendence finds ex
pression, it need hardly be said, in numberless
passages of St. Paul's Epistles. The doctrine
of the divine immanence, which is specially
characteristic of this speech, and which is here
presented in its simplest and most general form,
is stated in its strictly theological aspect in that
passage of St. Paul's Epistle to the Colossians
where he dwells on the Son's mediatorship in
the world of nature as well as in the world of
grace. He is "the first-born of all creation;
for in him were all things created, in the heavens
and upon the earth, things visible and things

228 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
invisible ... all things have been created
through him, and unto him {eh avTov) ; and he
is before all things, and in him all things consist
(rd TrdvTa iv avTW avvecrTrjKev) , and he is the
head of the body, the church, etc." (Col. i.
15 ff). Again, in the Epistle to the Ephesians
St. Paul, in two memorable phrases, indicates
the close relation of the redemptive and the
cosmic functions of the Son : " He [i.e. the
Father] . . . gave him to be head over all
things to the church, which is his body, the
fulness of him that filleth all in all" (i. 22 f).
"He . . . ascended far above all the heavens,
that he might fill all things " (iv. 10). These
two latter passages in particular present the
Apostle's matured conception of the nearness
of God to the world — a truth which finds ex
pression in the epigram of the missionary
speech, "In him [i.e. God] we live and move
and have our being."
Such is the doctrine of God contained in the
speech. The greatest of Athenian philosophers
had once said : " To find out the Father and
Maker of all this universe is a hard task.
And when we have found Him, to speak

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 229
of Him to all men is impossible" (Plato,
Timaeus 28 c). The preacher on the Areo
pagus, like the Apostle who speaks in the
Epistles, claims that he knows the secret —
to pvo-Trjpiov T?js eio-efteias — and that he is com
missioned to proclaim what he knows. " What
ye worship {eio-efteiTe) in ignorance, this set I
forth to you" {v. 23).
{c) The Divine Call to Repentance.
In the Stoic doctrine of God as Matter,
Force, Destiny, there was no room for a belief
either in divine righteousness or in human
responsibility. Man lived and acted in the
chains of a physical law of constraint. It is
true that here as elsewhere the language of
Stoic writers rose to a level far above that of
their formal tenets. But the dogmas of Stoicism
knew nothing of a sense of sin. For the sake
of the Stoics especially among his hearers, it
was a matter of primary importance that the
Christian preacher should affirm that God is
"the moral Governor of the world," and that
man is responsible to Him. " Now [God]
declareth to men that they should all every
where repent : inasmuch as he hath appointed

230 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
a day, in the which he will judge the world
in righteousness by the man whom he hath
ordained ; whereof he hath given assurance unto
all men, in that he raised him from the dead "
{vv. 30 f). The visit to Athens stands mid
way between St. Paul's evangelization of Thes-
salonica and his visit to Corinth, where the two
Epistles to the Thessalonians were written.
These letters shew that at this period of his
ministry St. Paul's mind was filled with the
expectation of Christ's return as the Judge.
" His preaching [at Thessalonica] seems to
have turned mainly upon one point — the ap
proaching judgment, the coming of Christ. . . .
Around this one doctrine the Apostle's practical
warnings and exhortations had clustered.1 "
We have already seen how one element in his
proclamation of the Gospel at Thessalonica had
a place, as was indeed inevitable, in his appeal
to the people of Lystra (see above, p. 197).
The other characteristic note of his preaching
at Thessalonica was equally prominent in his
speech at Athens. Here, as there (1 Thess. i.
10), the announcement of the judgment and the
1 Bishop Lightfoot, Biblical Essays, p. 260.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 231
proclamation of the raising of the future Judge
from the dead by the Father are linked closely
together. Further, it is important for our
immediate purpose to notice how each element
in this proclamation of the Gospel at Athens is
Pauline. The season of judgment is, according
to the imagery of the Old Testament {e.g. Am.
v. 18, Is. ii. 12), described as "a day" (comp.
e.g. 1 Thess. v. 2, 4, 2 Thess. i. 10, ii. 2,
1 Cor. i. 8, Rom. ii. 5, 16, Phil. i. 6, 10). This
"day," however it may be unknown to men,
has been fixed in the Divine counsels (compare
the line of thought in 2 Thess. ii., Rom. xiii.
11 f.). The judgment will be universal (comp.
Rom. ii. 16, iii. 6, 2 Tim. iv. 1), and righteous
(comp. e.g. Rom. ii. 5, 2 Tim. iv. 8). It will
be the judgment of God the Father ministered
through (iv) Him whom He ordained {&piaev)
by the Resurrection (comp. Rom. ii. 16, Sid Xp.
'Irjcrov : Rom. i. 4, to£> opiaOevTOS . . . e'f dvaar.
veKpmv). The mediator in the judgment is a
man {dvSpi : comp. 1 Tim. ii. 5, Rom. v. 15,
1 Cor. xv. 47, Phil. ii. 7 f).
At Lystra, as we saw, the speaker said
nothing of his Christian message. At Athens

232 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
the words which deal with distinctively Christian
truths are few. And they are elementary.
Christ is referred to simply as a man {dvrjp).
The word is true, but it conveyed only half the
truth about His Person. " Sic appellat Jesum,"
says Bengel, "pro captu auditorum. Plura
erat dicturus audire cupientibus." The present
was no fitting occasion to unfold the mystery of
the Lord's divine glory. For when the listeners
perceived that this strange teacher was speaking
of the " resurrection of dead men," they jeered.
Their own poet (Aesch. Eum. 647 f), in the
great assize-scene laid in that very Areopagus,
had said,
dvSpbs S'iweiSdv aT/j.' dvao-wdo-g kovis
awa% BavbvTos, oUtis iar avdo-raais.
It was not worth their while to give him further
hearing. " Solvuntur risu tabulae."
Thou canst not think a mere barbarian Jew
As Paulus proves to be, one circumcised,
Hath access to a secret shut from us ?
Thou wrongest our philosophy, O king,
In stooping to inquire of such an one,
As if his answer could impose at all !
But some few had followed this " mere barbarian
Jew " through the outer courts of natural religion
to the threshold of the temple of revelation.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 233
They had gained a glimpse, to use Bishop
Butler's severely restrained phrase, of "the
importance of Christianity."
Soon after the Apostle spoke these words
on the Areopagus, he left Athens (xviii. i).
His success there was small. Only a few
persons " clave unto him, and believed." There
is, in the records of the Apostolic age, no evi
dence that a Christian community took root at
Athens, or that St. Paul himself had any
further communications with the little band of
" brethren " there who owed their conversion to
him. From Athens the Apostle passed on to
Corinth. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians
he reminds them how he came to them " in
weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling,"
(ii. 3) ; how his preaching among them was free
from all rhetorical art or recourse to human
" wisdom " (ii. 1 ff. ; comp. i. 18 ff., ii. 13) ; how
that there " not many wise after the flesh . . .
were called" (i. 26); how he had "determined
not to know anything among [them] save Jesus
Messiah, and him crucified " (ii. 2). We cannot
but ask whether this deep depression and this
emphatic assertion of the simplicity of the

234 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Gospel were not prompted by some special
circumstances. Was the Apostle conscious
that at Athens he had for once been too eager
to gain the "wise after the flesh," and that he
had for this end gone far in the way of meeting
philosophy with philosophy, and so had obscured
the plain message of " a crucified Messiah "
(i Cor. i. 23) ? If this is the true interpretation
of his words in the Corinthian Epistle, we have
a strong confirmation of the truthfulness of the
historian's account of the Apostle's visit to
Athens. 3. The last speech in the Acts with which
we have to deal is the Pastoral Speech of St.
Paul addressed to the Ephesian Elders at
Miletus. The speech at Miletus differs widely from all
the other speeches contained in the Book. The
latter are addressed either to "those without,"
whether Jews or Gentiles, or in one case (x. 34
ff.) to inquirers. In them a stranger speaks to
strangers. In this one alone a Christian is
represented as appealing to Christians, a chief
pastor — and that chief pastor St. Paul — to the

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 235
Elders, to representative members, of a flock
which he had long tended. The character of
the speech then challenges and facilitates a com
parison of its language and its ideas with the
language and the ideas of St. Paul's Epistles.
The line of thought is simple and direct ; the
tone is devotional, not didactic, still less con
troversial. One trait of the speech alone must
at this point be noticed. In this Pauline speech,
as in the Pauline Epistles, there are strong
undercurrents, which interrupt the even flow of
the tide. A topic is apparently dismissed ;
presently it forces its way into prominence
again. The speech is primarily concerned with
the past and the future. The pastor, in the
midst of the pain of a present parting, recalls to
his hearers' minds his life and work among
them ; he appeals to their remembrance of
what he has been to them as a complete refuta
tion of charges which have been, or may be,
brought against his motives and against his
teaching. He forecasts what the future has in
store for himself and for the Church of Ephesus,
and with these anticipations he connects his
pastoral charge.

236 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
(i) The Past.
Thrice in the speech the Apostle is repre
sented as appealing to the knowledge and the
remembrance of his hearers {vv. 18, 31, 34).
Such an appeal is eminently in the manner of
St. Paul.1 First he recalls to their minds his
unbroken sojourn among them : " Ye yourselves
know from the first day (comp. Phil. i. 5) that
I set foot in Asia, how it was with you that I
was the whole time " {irGys p>e& v/jl&v tov irdvTa
y^povov iyevofiriv). The words — note the emphasis
on "with you" — imply that during the whole
of his visit to Asia he made Ephesus his home.
This statement is in complete accord with an
incidental notice in a letter of St. Paul to a
neighbouring church (Col. ii. 1), from which we
learn that neither the "brethren" at Colossae
nor those at Laodicea, nor — as the language
seems to imply — others in that district of Asia,
had ever "seen his face in the flesh." The assur
ance of his fervent prayers on behalf of all such 2
1 1 Thess. ii. if., 5, 11, iii. 4, iv. 2,-2 Thess. iii. 7, Gal. iv. 13.
Phil. iv. 15 (knowledge); 2 Thess. ii. 5, 1 Cor. xi. 2, Eph. ii. 11
(remembrance); comp. e.g. 1 Thess. ii. 10, 1 Cor. iv. 17.
2 BiXoi yap vfias elSivai, JjXIkov dywva lxa vwip v/jiiov Kal tuv ev A.
Kal Saoi ovx ebpaKav k.t.X. (Col. ii. 1 ; comp. i. 3, iv. 12).

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 237
is doubtless intended to allay any feeling
of resentment on their part, that he had long
been near them and yet had never come
to them. During those three years {v. 31)
then the disciples at Ephesus had been able
narrowly to watch their teacher's life and
work. They had seen his life. It was a life of
continuous bond-service to his Master {SovXevav
T&Kvpiw: comp. e.g. Rom. xii. 11, Phil. ii. 22,
Eph. vi. 7 ; Rom. i. 1, Gal. vi. 17). They had
been witnesses of all that that service involved
— " with all lowliness of mind (comp. Eph. iv.
2 ; and e.g. 1 Thess. ii. 6 ff, 2 Cor. iv. 5, vii. 6),
and with tears (comp. v. 31, 2 Cor. ii. 4, Phil. iii.
18 ; and e.g. 1 Cor. ii. 3, 2 Cor. i. 8, Rom. ix. 2),
and with trials which befell me by the plots of
the Jews." The Apostle's ministry at Ephesus
was saddened by personal sorrows and by the
hostility of enemies, — " without were fightings,
within were fears" (2 Cor. vii. 5). In St.
Luke's narrative of the events at Ephesus,
though there is a hint of the opposition of the
Jews (xix. 9), the foreground of the picture is
filled with the stirring scenes of the trade riot,

238 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
in which Demetrius the silversmith is the ring
leader. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians,
written at Ephesus (xvi. 8), there are brief but
significant allusions to opposition of many kinds
— "There are many adversaries" (xvi. 9) ; and
to some signal crisis of personal violence — " If
after the manner of men I fought with beasts
at Ephesus " (xv. 32). In the latter passage the
reference can hardly be to the tumult in the
theatre ; for (1) the Apostle, when he wrote the
letter, was contemplating a further sojourn at
Ephesus (xvi. 8), and this he could hardly have
done after that violent outburst ; indeed, in the
Acts, our one authority for the story of the
proceedings of Demetrius and his fellow-crafts
men, we are expressly told that he left Ephesus
immediately "after the uproar was ceased";
(2) we learn from the Acts that the advice of
his friends and the warning of the Asiarchs
restrained St. Paul from " adventuring himself
into the theatre" (xix. 30 f), so that he himself
did not come into contact with the infuriated
mob. The words, then, in 1 Cor. xv. 32 must
allude to some earlier peril (comp. Rom. xvi. 4,

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 239
Acts xviii. 26), and we may not unreasonably
connect them with "the plots of the Jews"
mentioned in the speech. It is clear, however,
that these " plots " were something much more
to the Apostle than harassing dangers ; they
involved "temptations." It is in reference to
this period that St. Paul tells the Corinthian
disciples "concerning our affliction which befell
us in Asia, that we were weighed down exceed
ingly, beyond our power, insomuch that we
despaired even of life " (2 Cor. i. 8). Why
these outward perils overwhelmed him with
bitter sorrow, and even brought with them
spiritual trials, is made plain in the Epistle to
the Romans, an Epistle written apparently at
Corinth just before the Apostle started on this
last journey to Jerusalem (Acts xx. 2 f). That
letter reveals St. Paul's yearning love for his
countrymen and his deep conviction that the
divine counsels with regard to them were
permanent and inviolable. The persevering
treachery, then, with which the Jews dogged
his steps, for no other reason than because he
was the herald of the Messiah, tested not only
his courage and his patience but also his faith

240 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
in the God of Israel. " The plots of the Jews "
brought St. Paul face to face with the dark
problem of Israel's unbelief in a concrete and
personal form. The Apostle's wrestling with
these "temptations," these subtle assailants of
the calm assurance of his faith, was a spectacle
on which, at least in part, the Ephesian Elders
had looked.
St. Paul's work also — his method and the
substance of his teaching — was known to the
Ephesians — " Teaching you publicly, and from
house to house, testifying both to Jews and
to Greeks repentance toward God, and faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ" {vv. 20 f). If
these words were really (in substance) spoken
by St. Paul, they give a vivid picture of the
Apostle's ministry at one of the great churches
which he founded — a picture more vivid, per
haps, and more comprehensive than any we
find elsewhere. He "used both public and
private monitions and exhortations." On the
one hand, the speaker recalls to the Elders how
he had been constant in giving instruction in
the assemblies of "the Brethren." The allusions
in the Epistles to such public teaching are

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 241
indirect. Such a habit on the Apostle's part is
implied when he refers to exhortations given
to his correspondents while he was yet with
them (2 Thess. iii. 10, 1 Cor. xi. 23, xv. 1), and
when he gives directions as to the due conduct
of assemblies for worship and instruction (1 Cor.
xiv. 18 f). The public reading of his Epistles,
when he himself was absent, was clearly meant
to take the place of his personal public utterances
(1 Thess. v. 27, Col. iv. 16). And indeed a
statement as to so obvious an element in the
work of an Apostle is self-evidently true and
natural. On the other hand, the Elders knew
how diligent the Apostle had been in dealing
with individuals. The house-to-house visitation
of the persecutor (/eara. tovs o'ikovs elo-iropevopLevos,
Acts viii. 3) had passed into the house-to-
house visitation of the Christian pastor (/car
oikovs, xx. 20). In regard to this matter also,
the Epistles supply no precise parallel. In
them no reference is ever made in definite
terms to St. Paul's work in the homes of
inquirers or of disciples ; but the Apostle's
sense of responsibility for individuals is in
different ways emphasized again and again.
R

242 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Two passages, for example, — the one in his
earliest Epistle, the other in one of the Epistles
of the first Roman captivity, — sufficiently prove
the earnestness and the tenderness with which
he dealt with individuals : " Ye know how we
dealt with each one of you, as a father with his
own children, exhorting you, and encouraging
you" (i Thess. ii. n); "Admonishing every
man and teaching every man in all wisdom,
that we may present every man perfect in
Christ" (Col. i. 28). The thought and the
language of these passages — the "each one of
you " of the former of them, and the thrice-
repeated "every man" of the latter — are very
closely akin to the thought and the language
of some of the closing words of the speech :
" By the space of three years I ceased not
to admonish every one night and day with
tears" {v. 31). It is sufficient simply to
notice the other details of the ministry at
Ephesus — its comprehensiveness, "testifying
both to Jews and Greeks " (comp. 1 Cor.
i. 24 ff, xii. 13, Rom. i. 14 ff, iii. g, x.
12); and its twofold message, "repentance
toward God (comp. e.g. 2 Cor. v. 20 ff),

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 243
and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ " (comp.
e.g. Rom. x. 9 ff).
(2) The Apologia.
The leader of a great movement is commonly
indifferent, at least outwardly, to praise or
blame. He presses on with the work of the
present, and leaves the calumnies of enemies
and the complaints of half-hearted friends to
that final court of appeal, the long lapse of
time. If he is a religious man, his thoughts
rise higher, to God who knows all hearts and
who will in the end vindicate His servant.
Such at times was St. Paul's feeling : " With
me it is a very small thing that I should be
judged of you, or of man's judgment : yea, I
judge not mine own self. . . . He that judgeth
me is the Lord" (1 Cor. iv. 3 f). But it was
not always so with him. His Epistles reveal
him to us as a man of keen sensibility, whose
heart was too tender and too impetuous not to
be irritated beyond the possibility of a calm
silence by the open charges and the whispered
insinuations of overt adversaries and of false
allies. Moreover, a nobler influence was at
work than the mere impulses of natural

244 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
character. St. Paul never doubted that he
had received his call as an Apostle from the
Lord Jesus himself. Such an apostleship must
be above suspicion. " That the ministry be
not blamed " was the true motive of very
much of St. Paul's uncompromising self-asser
tion. The personal and the official character
of the Apostle alike made it impossible for
him Contentedly to forget slanders, however
unscrupulous and unfounded, of which he was
the victim. We trace, especially in the letters
which belong to the active period of his life, a
habit of self-defence, persistent, eager, at times
almost fierce in its intensity. He meets a
charge ; when he has passed from it, the painful
recollection haunts him and insensibly moulds
his treatment of other matters ; presently he
returns to the slander, and again refutes it.
That this is a true statement of the case will
be plain to any sympathetic student of the
two Epistles to the Thessalonians, and
especially of the Second Epistle to the Co
rinthians. The latter Epistle more than any
other reveals the heart of St. Paul ; in it he
lays bare to his readers a conflict of contending

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 245
emotions, and all through the letter a dominating
element is that of apologia. This letter, it will
be observed, was written shortly after St. Paul's
long sojourn at Ephesus ended (xx. I f), and
so within a few months of this leave-taking at
Miletus. In the speech at Miletus we note
precisely the same apologetic spirit at work as
we trace in these Epistles. At certain points
it finds clear and definite expression {vv. 26,
2,2,)- All through the speech its influence is
not far from the surface ; it inspires the appeal
to the Elders' intimate knowledge of St. Paul's
life, and the reference to his supreme ambition
of "fulfilling . . . the ministry which I received
from the Lord Jesus "{v. 24). And further, after
the solemn and pathetic words of commendation
{v. 32), which were intended, as it would seem
likely, to close the speech, we have one of those
swift retrogressions and revulsions of feeling
by which we are sometimes startled in St.
Paul's Epistles (comp. e.g. 2 Cor. vi. 1 1— vii. 4,
Phil. iii. 1 f), and the speaker abruptly and
prosaically returns to the same theme of self-
defence : " I coveted no man's silver, or gold,
or apparel " {v. 2,2,)-

246 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
When we ask the question — From what
charges and insinuations was St. Paul so anxious
to defend himself ? — the answer is supplied by
a typical passage in his earliest Epistle : " Our
exhortation is not of error, nor of uncleanness,
nor in guile ; but even as we have been approved
of God to be intrusted with the gospel, so we
speak ; not as pleasing men, but God which
proveth our hearts. For neither at any time
were we found using words of flattery, as ye
know, nor a cloke of covetousness {ifKeove^ias),
God is witness ; nor seeking glory of men,
neither from you, nor from others, when we
might have been burdensome {Swdfievoi iv fidpei
elvai), as apostles of Christ. . . . For ye
remember, brethren, our labour and travail :
working night and day, that we might not
burden {irpbs to p,i) iiri^aprjo-ai) any of you, we
preached unto you the gospel of God. Ye
are witnesses, and God also, how holily and
righteously and unblameably we behaved our
selves towards you that believe" (i Thess.
ii- 3 «).
The charges at which the Apostle here
hints are, to speak broadly, two. (i) His

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 247
motives were impugned. He was dominated,
it was said, by a lust for power and influence.
He aimed at gaining a personal ascendancy
over his converts. Or, as others seem to have
alleged, his designs were simply mercenary.
His ministry was a mere matter of money, an
expedient for enriching himself at the expense
of his enthusiastic followers, (ii) His faithful
ness as an evangelist and teacher was called in
question. His preaching was no simple and
sincere proclamation of the Gospel. It was
limited and moulded by his own selfish designs.
To win popularity he must needs play the
time-server and the flatterer.
Both these charges are in St. Paul's mind in
other passages of his Epistles, and they are met
in the words of the speech.
(i) To the accusation of self-seeking, so far
as it involved an imputation of compassing
undue authority and" influence (comp. 2 Cor.
i. 24, iv. 5, x. iff), there is probably an indirect
reference in the words : " I hold not my life of
any account (comp. Phil. ii. 30), as dear unto
myself, so that I may accomplish my course
(comp. 2 Tim. iv. 7), and the ministry (comp.

248 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Col. iv. 17, 2 Tim. iv. 5, Col. i. 25 ; and e.g.
2 Cor. iii. 6, iv. 1, v. 18) which I -received from
the Lord Jesus (comp. Gal. i. 1, 12, 1 Tim.
i. 12), to declare (Siap,apTvpao-Qai, comp. 1 Thess.
iv. 6) the gospel of the grace of God " (God's
free benevolence towards all men ; comp. Rom.
v. 15 ff, 2 Cor. vi. 1, Eph. i. 7, ii. 7, iii. 2, Col.
i. 6). In the Epistles this surrender on the
Apostle's part of life and of the joy of living
for the sake of Christ and His work finds
frequent expression in different contexts ; see
e.g. 2 Cor. iv. 7ff, vi. 4 ff, xii. 9 f, Phil. i. 20,
iii. 8, Col. i. 24. It is a subject which, especially
in the Second Epistle to Corinth, is seldom far
from his thoughts, and, when it forces itself into
prominence, it breaks down the barriers of
natural reticence and even of Christian humility.
No one, his words to the Ephesian Elders
seem to imply, who so freely gave himself up
for his work's sake could in that work be seeking
the glory of self. But a more ready weapon
against the Apostle was supplied by the insinua
tion that money was his real quest. This was
an accusation which all could understand. His
" defence " to those who at Corinth constituted

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 249
themselves his inquisitors was the assertion of
his right as an Apostle to earn his livelihood,
coupled with the assurance that he had in
relation to the Corinthians voluntarily foregone
the exercise of that right (i Cor. ix. 3-18 ;
comp. 2 Cor. xi. 7 ff, xii. 13). But his very
defence, it seems not unlikely, was converted
into evidence against him. Somehow supplies
came to him. It is possible that his own strong
phrase, " I robbed {io-vkrjo-a) other churches "
(2 Cor. xi. 8), is in reality an echo of the random
charges flung at him at Corinth. The Apostle's
earliest and simplest reply to his adversaries
was the fact that "night and day" he worked
at the trade which he had learned for his own
support. With his words already quoted from
the First Epistle to the Thessalonians we
compare a passage from the Second Epistle to
that church : "Yourselves know how ye ought
to imitate us : for we behaved not ourselves
disorderly among you ; neither did we eat
bread for nought at any man's hand, but in
labour and travail, working night and day, that
we might not burden any of you : not because
we have not the right, but to make ourselves

250 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
an ensample unto you, that ye should imitate
us " (2 Thess. iii. 7 ff). When to these two
passages from St. Paul's two earliest letters we
add another from a later Epistle — " Let him
that stole steal no more : but rather let him
labour, working with his hands the thing that is
good, that he may have whereof to give to him
that hath need" (Eph. iv. 28) — we have the
three ideas presented in the words of the
Pauline speech : " I coveted no man's silver, or
gold, or apparel. Ye yourselves know that
these hands ministered unto my necessities,
and to them that were with me. In all things
I gave you an example, how that so labouring,
ye ought to help the weak " {vv. 33 ff). These
ideas are — (1) the Apostle's own strenuous
activity in manual work ; (2) the example which
he thereby set before his own converts ; (3) the
fruitfulness of such labour in the power it gave
to succour the needy. The duty of the
Christian man " to shew himself gentle, and to
be merciful for Christ's sake to poor, and needy
people," was, as is clear from the Epistles
written in the immediately preceding period,
prominent in St. Paul's thoughts at this time —

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 251
" Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the
law of Christ " (Gal. vi. 2) ; " We that are strong
ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and
not to please ourselves " (Rom. xv. 1 ; comp.
1 Thess. v. 14). Indeed his present journey
to Jerusalem with all its inevitable dangers had
been undertaken for the express purpose of
bringing to " the poor among the saints that
[were] at Jerusalem " the gifts of the richer
churches in Macedonia and Achaia (Rom. xv.
26). With the fulfilment of this Christian duty
the Apostle is represented in the speech as
connecting the constant remembrance of "the
words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said,
It is more blessed to give than to receive " (Acts
xx. 35). In precisely the same spirit, writing
to the Galatians, St. Paul insists on brotherly
sympathy and help as a fulfilment of "the law
of the Christ " (vi. 2), the law which the
Christ enforced by His express words (John
xiii. 34) and by His life and death ; and in the
Epistle to the Romans the decisive plea for
unselfish service of others lies in that same
divine example — " For the Christ also pleased
not himself" (xv. 3). In the Pauline speech

252 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
a saying of the Lord's is adduced, a saying
which has not been recorded in our Gospels.
The speaker quotes it as already familiar to his
hearers, and we cannot but infer that the
teaching of Christ had been a subject on which
he had instructed his friends when he was
living among them. Such a conclusion is
altogether in harmony with the evidence of the
Epistles of St. Paul. Many "oracles of the
Lord" may be. imbedded in the Apostle's
writings, which, as they have no place in the
Gospels, it is impossible now to identify ; but
an important series of coincidences with the
text of our Gospels is contained in the Pauline
Epistles.1 Further, in the First Epistle to the
Corinthians he appeals explicitly to a command
ment of " the Lord " as decisive on the question
of divorce (vii. 10 ; comp. vv. 12, 25), and in
one of his latest Epistles (1 Tim. vi. 3 ; comp.
1 Tim. v. 18, Luke x. 7) he appears to refer to
a collection of the "words of our Lord Jesus
Christ," whether oral or written. It is there
fore quite natural that he should recall to his
1 I have collected many of these coincidences in The Lord's Prayer
in the Early Church (Texts and Studies, i. 3), pp. 19 ff.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 253
hearers one of " the wholesome words " of the
Lord Jesus, that it might remain ever printed
in their remembrance.
(ii) Closely related to this charge of obedi
ence to selfish and sordid aims, which drew
from the Apostle the appeal to his industry as
a craftsman, was the charge of unfaithfulness to
the truth which he had been commissioned to
proclaim. The gospel of the self-seeker must
needs be "words of flattery" (1 Thess. ii. 5).
St. Paul discovered that to speak the truth
sometimes in the view of his converts trans
formed him into an enemy (Gal iv. 16). To
this imputation of unfaithfulness St. Paul refers,
as we have seen, in his earliest extant letter.
He meets it again with an emphatic plea of
" not guilty " in the Second Epistle to the
Corinthians : " We are not as the many, playing
the huckster with the word of God {KairrjKevovTes
tov \6yov tov deov) : but as of sincerity, but as of
God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ "
(ii. 17); and again, "We have renounced the
hidden things of shame, not walking in crafti
ness, nor adulterating (SoXowre?) the word of
God ; but by manifestation of the truth com-

254 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
mending ourselves to every man's conscience
in the sight of God. But and if our gospel is
veiled, it is veiled in them that are perishing "
(iv. 2 ff). In both passages the figure is drawn
from the sale of wine ; but the metaphor in the
former passage is more comprehensive, and in
cludes that of the latter. The huckster too often,
for the sake of gain, adulterates his goods and
gives scant measure to the buyer. So the teacher
who is bent on his own advantage mingles
with his message soft and cozening words, and
is silent as to all difficult and unwelcome truths.
Such, St. Paul asserts, was not his character.
In his ministry and in his gospel there was no
element of falseness. He won men by unfold
ing to them "the truth," the truth in all its
entirety. If his gospel failed, it failed only in
the case of those whose rescue from death lay
beyond his power. It is plain at once how
closely related to tr!e protestations of the
speech are these protestations of the Epistle.
There is no similarity between them in lan
guage, but the main ideas are the same : "I
shrank not from declaring unto you anything
that was profitable " {ovSev inreo-TeiXdfj,riv tmv

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 255
avpxpepovTcov tov piq dvayyeTXai vpuv, V. 20). . . .
" I testify unto you this day that I am pure
from the blood of all men. For I shrank not
from declaring unto you the whole counsel of
God {011 yap vtreaTeCXap/qv tov p-rj dvayyeTXai irao-av
ttjv (3ovkr)v tov deov vplv, vv. 26 f). The speaker
protests that all that he could do has been done.
The guilt of spiritual murder, the curse and
condemnation of every teacher who is swayed
by worldly aims, does not rest on him. The
repeated " I shrank not from declaring unto
you " emphasizes the assurance that he had
suppressed nothing from fear or favour, nothing
of that which was "profitable," nothing of
"the whole counsel of God." That latter
phrase (comp. Eph. i. II, tov to irdvTa ivepyovv-
tos KaTa ttjv (3ovXr)v tov deXrjp,aTOS avrov) points
to the divine policy, if the word may be
allowed, in the creation and redemption of man,
God's "good pleasure which he purposed in
[Christ] unto a dispensation of the fulness of
the seasons" (Eph. i. 9 f). On the one side,
this unfolding to the Ephesian Church of " the
whole counsel of God " included in its scope the
spiritual " wisdom " which St. Paul says that he

256 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
"spoke among the full-grown," "the wisdom
that hath been hidden, which God foreordained
before the worlds unto our glory " ( I Cor. ii.
6 ff). On the other hand, it involved insistence
on holiness of heart and life as the necessary
corollary to be drawn from the historic facts of
Christ's death, resurrection, and exaltation — the
believer's death unto sin and his new birth
unto righteousness (comp. Rom. vi. 2 ff, Col.
iii. 1 ff, Eph. ii. 4 ff, iv. 20 ff.) — "This is
the will of God, even your sanctification " (1
Thess. iv. 3). Further, the other phrase, "the
things that are profitable " (t« arvpL<pipovTa), points
to the ethical and social application of the
Gospel to the problems of daily life — complete
abstinence from all the contaminating influences
of surrounding idolatry (comp. e.g. 1 Cor. x. 14
ff. ; 2 Cor. vi. 14 ff), the "walking in wisdom
toward them that are without " (Col. iv. 5),
family duties (Col. iii. 18 ff, Eph. v. 22), the
obligation of following "honest occupations,"
which were "good and profitable unto men"
(Titus iii. 8). The brief phrases of the speech
then are seen to summarize the detailed teach
ing of the Epistles. The Apostle's defence is

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 257
that neither by the promptings of avarice nor
by the desire for popularity had he been seduced
into silence as to either the verities of the
Gospel or its bearing on conduct.
(3) The Forecast of the Future.
The Apostle is represented in the speech as
looking beyond the present moment and steadily
fixing his gaze on the horizon. Through the
mists of uncertainty he discerns both for the
Ephesian Church and for himself lowering
clouds. (1) His anticipation for himself is given in
the words : " And now, behold, I go bound in
the spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things
that shall befall me there : save that the Holy
Ghost testifieth unto me in every city, saying
that bonds and afflictions abide me. But I hold
not my life of any account, as dear unto myself.
. . . And now, behold, I know that ye all,
among whom I went about preaching the king
dom, shall see my face no more" {vv. 22 ff).
In regard to three points we compare these
words with passages from St. Paul's Epistles.
{a) The journey to Jerusalem here referred
to was no sudden resolve. Months before,

258 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
when the Apostle wrote from Ephesus to the
Corinthians, a collection on behalf of the poorer
Brethren at Jerusalem was already in progress
(i Cor. xvi. i ff), and it then seemed possible
that it might be right for St. Paul himself to
go to Jerusalem with the gift {v. 4). As time
went on his purpose became fixed. He realized
that it was a matter of the last importance for
the binding together of the Jewish Churches of
Palestine and the Churches of the Gentile world
that he himself, the Apostle of the Gentiles,
should be the bearer of this liberality of the
Gentiles, and should himself be witness of what
he hoped would be the joyful acceptance of
these gifts on the part of the Jewish Christians.
When he wrote from Corinth to the Roman
Church his mind was already made up — " Now
I go unto Jerusalem, ministering unto the saints "
(Rom. xv. 25). But with the conviction that
the journey was necessary, there grew up an
assurance that it could only be carried out at
the risk of his life. With unusual earnestness
and solemnity he asks for the prayers of the
Christians at Rome, both that he may be brought
safely through the days of peril, and that a

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 259
happy issue may crown his efforts after peace —
" Now I beseech you, brethren, by our Lord
Jesus Christ, and by the love of the Spirit, that
ye wrestle together with me in your prayers to
God for me ; that I may be delivered from them
that are disobedient in Judeea, and that my
ministration which I have for Jerusalem may
be acceptable to the saints ; that I may come
unto you in joy through the will of God, and
together with you find rest" (Rom. xv. 30 ff). In
this forecast, serious as the danger seemed, hope
on the whole predominates. The Apostle's
plans are allowed to extend beyond the visit to
the Holy City ; he looks forward with some
confidence to visiting Rome. If with the sober
hopefulness of the Epistle we contrast the tone
of unselfish and tender submissiveness which
pervades the speech, yet, when we look beneath
the surface, we perceive that the difference of
feeling is quite natural. The sense that he was
parting from dear friends could not but deepen
for St. Paul the gloom which hung over his
future. The mind at such a moment cannot
brace itself to hope. Moreover, from an in
cidental notice in the Acts we learn that, since

260 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
he wrote to the Roman Church, he had been
obliged to change his route because of a plot of
the Jews (Acts xx. 3). If such were the dangers
which surrounded him in a distant colony of the
Dispersion, what would be likely to happen in
Jerusalem, where Jewish malice and cunning
were at their strongest, and where " the restrain
ing power " of the Roman authorities would be
least anxious to assert itself ? The picture, then,
which the author of the Acts draws of St. Paul's
attitude towards his journey to Jerusalem is in
itself natural ; moreover, its truthfulness is con
firmed by incidental notices alike in the Epistles
and in the Book of the Acts itself.
{b) In two points we note a divergence
between the Epistles and the speech.
(i) It appears from the Epistles to the Co
rinthians and the Romans, that St. Paul's mind
was full of the act of liberality which was the
occasion of his journey. The two things — his
journey and his mission as the almoner of the
Gentile Churches — were bound up together in
his thoughts. Nothing, however, in the speech
is said in reference to the collection for the
" poor saints " at Jerusalem. It is quite possible

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 261
that the omission is illusory ; a reference to
the subject contained in the actual address may
well have dropped out in the condensed report.
But, on the other hand, such silence on the
Apostle's part may have been deliberate. The
Churches of Galatia, Macedonia, and Achaia are
explicitly mentioned in the Epistles as sharing
in the gift sent by St. Paul's hands to Jeru
salem (1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2 Cor. viii. 1 ff, Rom.
xv. 26). If we may argue from the absence
in the Epistles of any mention of the Churches
of Asia in this connexion, we conclude that
these churches, for whatever reason, had taken
no part in this benevolent work. If this was
so, then we may well believe that, when it was
now too late for them to give him assistance
in the work which he had so much at heart,
delicacy of feeling prevented the Apostle from
blazoning before his Ephesian friends the
generosity of other churches. But, though no
mention of the collection is found in the
speech, the overwhelming sense of obligation
and duty which we know that St. Paul felt
in regard to it finds expression in the significant
phrase : " And now, behold, I go bound in the

262 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
spirit unto Jerusalem" {v. 22). From the speech
as much as from the Epistles we gather that in
this journey to Jerusalem St. Paul held that he
was simply doing what he could, in the whole
range of its responsibilities, to " accomplish the
ministry which [he had] received from the Lord
Jesus " {v. 24).
(ii) The Apostle is here {v. 25) represented
as expressing his own strong conviction {iya> olSa)
that he will never see his beloved converts again ;
this is their last meeting on earth. If, however,
as I believe that we are justified in doing, we
accept as genuine the Pastoral Epistles, it seems
clear that, after his first Roman captivity was
over, St. Paul did revisit Ephesus. This at least
is the most natural interpretation of his words to
Timothy, " I exhorted thee to tarry at Ephesus,
when I was going into Macedonia" (1 Tim.
i. 3), and of his reference in his last Epistle
(2 Tim. i. 15 ff.) to the defection from him of
"all that are in Asia" contrasted with the
faithful ministration to him at Ephesus on the
part of Onesiphorus. In any case, even if
this interpretation of these particular words
is questioned, or if the authenticity of these

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 263
Epistles is denied, these passages represent
an early tradition that the Apostle was brought
safely through his perils and regained his
liberty. Though it is not legitimate to lay
too much stress on such an argument, yet it
seems unlikely that a romancer would have put
into the Apostle's mouth a series of prophecies
which an early tradition about the Apostle's
later history represented as mistaken.
{c) The language of the speech in reference
to the Apostle's death is very closely akin to his
words on this subject in the Epistle to the
Philippians (i. 21-26). There is the same
solemnity, the same calmness, of tone ; the
same contentment with the sterner issue, if that
should come ; the same instinctive anxiety to
forget himself and to review the possibilities of
the future in their relation to the Apostle's
work and in their relation to his friends. More
over, one word — commonly misinterpreted —
reveals the same conception of death which is
characteristic of some notable passages in the
Epistles. The Apostle speaks {v. 29) of what will
happen to his friends p,eTa ttjv dfyiQv p.ov, " after
my arrival," "after my long journey is over and

264 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
I have reached my true home.1" The contrast
which is thus suggested enhances the signifi
cance of the words — his fellow-workers will be
in peril ; the Apostle himself will be at rest in
the presence of his Lord. We compare St.
Paul's words to the Philippians :" I am in a
strait betwixt the two, having the desire to
depart and be with Christ . . . yet to abide in
the flesh is more needful for your sake " (i. 23 f).
A still closer parallel is supplied by the Apostle's
language in an earlier Epistle about being "ab
sent from the Lord " {iKS7jp.0vp.ev dirb tov Kvplov)
during the life on earth, and after the death of
the body being " present with the Lord " (eVoV
p,rjcrai irpbs tov Kvpiov, 2 Cor. V. 6 ff. ). The
d(j}i^is of the speech and the iKSr)p,r)a-ai and
ivSr)p,rjo-ai of the Epistle form a group of words
in which the present life is regarded as a
journey or as a sojourn in an alien region, and
1 Such is the regular meaning of #</>i|is (comp. acj>iKveto-8ai) from
Herodotus (e.g. i. 69, vii. 58, ix. 76) onwards. Compare 3 Mace. vii.
18, tov fHao-iXius x°fyin"h.0~avT0s avrols evtpvxus rd wpbs tt)v dtpi^iv wdvra
iKdarip las iwl ttjv ISlav olriav : Joseph. Ant. IV. viii. 47, wpbs tovs
7]fieT4povs dweipii wpoybvovs Kal Bebs rfySe fxoi ttjv 7jp.ipav t-qs wpbs iKeivovs
drpt^eus ibpiae. It is not impossible that the phrase in the Acts is an
abbreviation of a fuller phrase (actually used in the speech) such as
Herd ttjv wpbs rbv Kvpiov &<f)ti;lv fxov.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 265
death the entrance into that Presence which is
the spirit's true home.
(11) The Apostle is represented, as we have
already seen, as connecting together his own
future and the future of his converts. The
prospect was dark for them, as (from an earthly
standpoint) it was for him. " I know (comp.
Phil. i. 19, 25) that after my arrival home
grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not
sparing the flock ; and from among your own
selves shall men arise, speaking perverted
things, to draw away the disciples after them "
vv. 29' f). The Ephesians are warned of a
twofold peril.
(i) Dangers would assail them from without.
Persecutors would do their pitiless worst against
the Church. Such appears to be the natural
interpretation of the metaphor of the wolves
and the flock (2 Esdras v. 18, Enoch lxxxix.
13 ff. ; Matt. x. 1 6 1| Luke x. 3, John x. 12),
That the sufferings which, for Christ's sake,
his converts endured touched St. Paul's heart is
clear from his Epistles (1 Thess. ii. 14 ff, iii.
1 ff, 2 Thess. i. 4, Phil. i. 29). Years before
this time he had taken pains to forearm his

266 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
friends at Thessalonica against such troubles,
and against the temptations which they would
inevitably bring with them (i Thess. iii. 4).
But here the Apostle's forecast is no mere
general prophecy of persecution — "all that would
live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecu
tion " (2 Tim. iii. 12). He appears to discern
signs of some definite and particular storm of
persecution which will be the sequel of his own
death — his own violent death. If we endeavour
to penetrate beneath the surface of St. Paul's
words, we may reasonably suppose that his
thoughts went back to the past. The death of
the first martyr kindled the fury of Saul the
Pharisee, and "there arose on that day a great
persecution against the church which was at
Jerusalem" (Acts viii. 1). Nay, he could not
but remember that his madness against these
hated Nazarenes goaded him to "persecute
them even unto foreign cities" (Acts xxvi. 11).
History would repeat itself. When the Apostle
himself, as he expected, fell a victim to " the
plots of the Jews " at Jerusalem, he may well
have thought that the infection of their vic
torious hatred would extend to the Dispersion,

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 267
and that the Jews, in the cities where they were
strong in number and influence, possibly in
alliance with the interested fanaticism of such
men as Demetrius and his fellow -craftsmen,
would lead a crusade against the Christian
Church. Perhaps the Apostle felt that the
crisis was at hand, of which he had written to
the Thessalonians (2 Thess. ii.), when "the
restraining power " — the authority of the Roman
magistracy — keeping down these dangerous
ebullitions of Jewish feeling (comp. Acts xviii.
12 ff), would, for whatever cause, be withdrawn.
The details of the vision of this troubled future,
as it rose before St. Paul's mind, it is impossible
to restore with certainty. It must be enough
that it has points of contact with the Apostle's
earlier history and with his earlier anticipations
of the triumph of Jewish violence.
(ii) But serious as the troubles would be
which came from without, those which sprang
from within would be even yet more full of
peril. The persecutor is often the forerunner
of the false teacher. There was a real danger
lest the Ephesian Christians should be "led
astray in the midst of these afflictions " {o-aiveo-dai

268 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
iv Tals dxtyeo-iv TavTais, i Thess. iii. 3 x) ; lest, in
the tension and in the strain on the moral and
spiritual powers which persecution would bring,
the infant Church at Ephesus would fall a prey
to the interested preachers of a gospel less
simple and less exacting than that of St. Paul.
Doubtless, when the Apostle warned the Elders
— ¦" from among your own selves shall men
arise, speaking perverted things, to draw away
the disciples after them " {v. 30) — he already saw
symptoms of the disease which soon after broke
out in the Asiatic Churches, "the philosophy
and vain deceit " with which the Epistle to the
Colossians deals (ii. 8), a disease to the ravages
of which in a more virulent form the Apostle,
writing at a later period, looked forward with
increased dread (comp. e.g. 1 Tim. iv. 1,2 Tim.
iii. 13). Two points in the description of these
errors stand out. (a) The false teachers would
speak "perverted things" {Sieo-Tpap,p,eva). The
Apostle is here represented as alleging, not that
their doctrines would be wholly and absolutely
false, but rather that in their hands Christian
truth would be warped, and the proportion of its
1 See Bishop Lightfoot's note in loco.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 269
different elements lost. Such appears to be the
character of the system of teaching impugned
in the Epistle to the Colossians. That system
did not so much involve a denial of the central
truths of Christianity as lay a wholly undue
stress on human "traditions" and on element
ary precepts. St. Paul does not stigmatize it,
as he stigmatized the teaching which had
leavened the Galatian Church, as a gospel
" different " from his own (Gal. i. 6). Such, too,
was certainly the character of the errors which
the Apostle had in view in the Pastoral Epistles.
" The duty laid on Timothy and Titus is not
to refute deadly errors, but to keep themselves
clear, and to warn others to keep themselves
clear, of trivialities which took the place of true
religion." He condemned such teachings as
"trashy and unwholesome stuff.1" (/3) And in
the second place the motives of these false
guides would be on the same low and earthly
level as their doctrine. Their ambition would
be " to draw away the disciples after themselves "
— "a simplicitate erga Christum et ab unitate
1 I have ventured to quote two sentences from my notes of Dr.
Hort's lectures on the Pastoral Epistles. ,

270 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
corporis" (Bengel). They would abuse the
gift of personal influence, and exalt a following
of themselves into a standard and test of faith.
Of such a degradation of the pastoral office the
Epistles reveal St. Paul's habitual dread and
condemnation. Thus, at the close of the almost
contemporary Epistle to the Romans, the
Apostle suddenly digresses into a vehement
warning : " Now I beseech you, brethren, mark
them which are causing the divisions and occa
sions of stumbling, contrary to the doctrine
which ye learned : and turn away from them.
For they that are such serve not our Lord
Christ, but their own belly ; and by their
smooth and fair speech they beguile the hearts
of the innocent" (xvi. 17 f). In the later
Epistle to the Colossians a similar note of
caution is sounded in the words: "Take heed
lest there shall be any one that maketh spoil of
you " (o o-vXayaywv, ii. 8). And in the Pastoral
Epistles we compare the painful picture of those
"that creep into houses, and take captive
{alxp-aXcoTi^ovTes) silly women laden with sins "
(2 Tim. iii. 6), and the instructions given to
Titus (iii. 10) as to the treatment of " a man that

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 271
is factious " {alpenKov avdpwirov ; comp. 2 Tim.
iv. 14, Titus i. 11). It is clear that St. Paul, as
time passed on, was keenly alive to the danger
lest on the one hand the simplicity of the Gospel
should be corrupted and its exacting strictness
relaxed, and lest on the other hand personal
discipleship to some designing teacher of this
lower type should in the minds of his converts
take the place of membership in the Church
of Christ (comp. i Cor. i. ii ff, iii. 21 f, iv.
6 f). The warning which he is represented
in the Acts as urging on the Ephesian Elders
is wholly in keeping with what the Epistles
disclose as to his habitual anxiety on the
subject. (4) The Pastoral Charge and Commenda
tion. The Apostle is represented as passing at
once from the assertion of his own pastoral
innocence to the ideal of life and service which
he sets before the Elders:' "Take heed unto
yourselves {irpoaeyeTe eavTols) and to all the flock"
{v. 28). To the phrase itself, and to this insist
ence on self-discipline as the primary obligation
which rests on the "shepherd of souls," there is

272 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
a close parallel in St. Paul's charge to Timothy :
" Take heed to thyself (eVe^e o-eavTw), and to thy
teaching. Continue in these things ; for in
doing this thou shalt save both thyself and them
that hear thee" (i Tim. iv. 16). The flock
will be rightly tended only by the pastor who
as a first duty tends himself. Stress is doubtless
laid on the "all" — "take heed unto all the
flock." The warning against the intrusion into
the work of the ministry of the spirit of par
tiality — the partiality which would, for example,
neglect the Jewish Christians, arid be at pains
only to meet the spiritual needs of the converts
from idolatry — is entirely Pauline. In the
Epistles, to refer only to one instance of St.
Paul's habitual thought, the Apostle again and
again emphasizes the fact that his words are
addressed to, and that his affections are warm
towards, "you all " (i Thess. i. 2, 2 Thess. iii. 18,
2 Cor. i. i, ii. 3, vii. 13, 15, xiii. 13, Rom. i. 8,
Phil. i. 1, 4, 7, 8, ii. 17; comp. Col. i. 28).
The true pastor must recognize the oneness of
the flock, and the need of nurture and of care
which belongs to each member of it.
The duties of the pastoral office are described

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 273
in the light of its source and of its essential
character. The source whence the Ephesian Elders
derived their office was the Holy Ghost — "in
the which the Holy Ghost set you as overseers "
{v. 28). The language used certainly does not
exclude the possibility that they may have been
chosen by the voice of the Church, and may
have received their commission through the
laying on of hands (vi. 3, xiv. 23, 1 Tim. iv. 14,
2 Tim. i. 6). But behind any human choice,
behind any human act of ordination, there lay
the divine action and will. Like Archippus at
Colossae, these Elders must "take heed to"
a ministry which they had "received in the
Lord" (Col. iv. 17). They were members of
the flock; but "in" the flock, in the organism
of the Church, they had, by divine appointment
and through the divine working, a special and
peculiar place as " overseers " {iv a> vp,ds to
7rvevp,a to dyiov edeTo iTriaKoirovs). What is here
said of a particular group of Elders is in language
and thought closely parallel to what in the First
Epistle to the Corinthians St. Paul affirms in
general of the ministry in the Church, and of its

274 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
analogue in the position of the several members
in the human body (i Cor. xii. 18, 6 debs edero
Ta pieXri . . . iv tw Q-&>p,aTi : 28, ovs p-ev edeTO 0 deos
iv T-fj iKKXrjaia irpmTov dnroo-ToXovs k.t.X. ; comp.
1 Thess. v. 9, 1 Tim. i. 12, ii. 7, 2 Tim. i. 11).
The idea of a divine appointment is in the
apostolic writings expressed in different ways.
What in the passage of the Corinthian Epistle
just referred to is traced back to God the
Father, is in a parallel passage of the Epistle
to the "Ephesians" ascribed to the ascended
Lord, the Mediator of the Father's activity in
the Church (Eph. iv. 11). Here the appoint
ment of the Elders is spoken of as the work of
the Holy Ghost, that one Spirit who permeates
and quickens the whole Body of Christ, and in
whom there come to the Church the graces of
fellowship and order (comp. 1 Cor. iii. 16, 2 Cor.
xiii. 13, Phil. ii. 1, Eph. ii. 22, iv. 3). To
the question, what precise form of the Spirit's
action is in the speaker's mind, no certain answer
can be given. The idea may be that the
Church is the home and organ of the Holy
Spirit, so that the action and thought of the
Church or of its representatives may be rightly

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 275
regarded as the action and thought of the Holy
Spirit (xv. 28 ; comp. 1 Thess. iv. 8, 1 Cor.
vii. 40). Or the allusion may be to utterances
of Prophets speaking " in the Spirit," which had
" led the way " to these members of the Church
as fit to discharge the functions of rulers and
teachers (i Tim. i. 18, iv. 14, Acts xiii. 2). Or,
lastly, the meaning may be that the manifesta
tion in these men of the charismata of the Spirit
(1 Cor. xii. 4 ff.) marked them out as able to bear
the burden of the ministry. Any one of these
thoughts, or a combination of them, may be the
import of the phrase " in which the Holy Ghost
set you as overseers " ; and each of these
thoughts is in harmony with those concep
tions of the activities of the Holy Spirit which
we find in St. Paul's Epistles. .
The source of the ministry is above. What,
then, is its special character ? Those who are
described in the narrative as " the elders of the
church" (xx. 17; comp. J as. v. 14) are here
said to have been set in the flock as " overseers "
{iirio-KOTroi) ; their work was to " shepherd " the
flock. Many points at once suggest themselves
for discussion, but our treatment of these words

276 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
must be limited by our immediate purpose, the
comparison of the thoughts and language of this
speech with the thoughts and language of the
Pauline Epistles.
We take first the pastoral metaphor. The
phrase " to feed (shepherd) my people Israel,"
or the like, is (in reference both to teaching
and ruling) common in the Old Testament {e.g.
2 Sam. vii. 7, 1 Chron. xi. 2, Ps. ixxviii. 71,
Jer. iii. 15); and the parable of the shepherd
inspires notable passages of the Prophets {e,g.
Jer. xxiii. 1 ff, Ezek. xxxiv.). The idea itself,
and the group of words which express the idea,
passed over into the Christian society, and
were used with a recognized application to the
life of the Church. The fact that St. Paul's
• metaphors are not commonly drawn from the
fields (yet see 1 Cor. iii. 6 ff, ix. 7) emphasizes
the occurrence of the word " shepherd " {i7oip,rjv)
in Eph. iv. 1 1 among terms denoting offices or
aspects of the Christian ministry, and indicates
that in such a connexion it had a definite and
acknowledged meaning. In the passage of the
speech at Miletus there is a very distinct trans
ference of the language of the Old Testament

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 277
to the Christian society. The flock which the
shepherds are to tend is the redeemed congre
gation {ttjv iKKXrjcriav tov deov, rjv TrepieTroirjaaTO :
Ps. lxxiv. 2, Is. xliii. 21), the new Israel (Gal.
vi. 16, Rom. ii. 29, iv. 12, Phil. iii. 3, Titus ii. 14).
Closely connected with this pastoral language
is the use here of the term "overseers" (eW-
o-kottoi). What is its relation to St. Paul's voca
bulary ? In his earliest Epistle (1 Thess. v. 12)
the Apostle exhorts his converts to acknowledge
" them that labour among you, and are over
you {irpoiaTapievovs vp,a>v) in the Lord, and ad
monish you." Here the allusion must be to
the officers of the local Church, two departments
of their "labour" being specially emphasized —
that of ruling and that of teaching (comp. Eph.
iv. II, tovs Se Troip,evas Kal SiSacrKaXovs). This
term {m-poio-Tdp,evoi), used in reference to the
former of these functions, meets us again side
by side with other specific terms — prophecy,
ministry, teaching — in the Epistle to the
Romans (xii. 8). Again, in thjs Pastoral Epistles
the same word is definitely used in connexion
with the work of the Elders (1 Tim. v. 17, 01
KaX&s Trpoeo-T&Tes 7rpeo-/3vTepoi). Here then we

278 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
have a term which for St. Paul and for his con-.
verts had a recognized meaning ; it expressed
the activities of the Elders regarded as the rulers
of a Church. A parallel term is that under dis
cussion now — the term iirio-Koiroi, the use of
which in St. Paul's Epistles it is necessary for
our present purpose, however briefly, to trace.
In the salutation of the Epistle to the Philip-
pians (i. i f.) the Apostle greets "all the saints
which are at Philippi, with the overseers and
the deacons " {o-vv iirio-KOTrois Kal SiaKovois). The
omission of the article in such a formula as a
salutation does not imply indefiniteness. Two
distinct classes of persons at Philippi are named,
"the overseers" and "the deacons," who are
set over against the main body, the unofficial
members, of the Philippian Church. Further,
the mention of the "overseers" immediately
precedes the mention of the "deacons"; and
the "deacons" in the First Epistle to Timothy,
written a very few years later, are certainly an
order of ministers in the Church. The natural
inference is that " overseers " is a term synony
mous with "elders." This conclusion is con
firmed when we turn to the Pastoral Epistles,

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 279
In the First Epistle to Timothy, after giving
directions about the Christian assemblies and
the place of men and women therein (ii. i- 1 5),
the Apostle goes on to treat of the officers in
the Church : "If a man seeketh overseership
{iTTio-KOTrrjs), he desireth a good work. The over
seer {tov iirlo-Koirov, i.e. each overseer) therefore
must be without reproach, etc. . . . Deacons in
like manner must be grave, etc."(iii. 1 ff.) Here
again the reference to "deacons " precludes any
indefiniteness in the interpretation of the terms
"overseership" and "overseer." Moreover,
the "overseer" must be " one that ruleth (77-po-
io-Tap,evov) well his own house " ; for, it is added,
"if a man knoweth not how to rule {irpoo-Tr)vai)
his own house, how shall he take care
{iirip-eXr]aeTai) of the church of God?" Hence
the office is obviously that of a ruler. Lastly,
unless the term "overseer" is practically equi
valent to the term " elder," we have the strange
result that while directions are given as to the
qualifications for the diaconate (iii. 8 ff), and as
to the treatment of Elders who are pre-eminent,
and of those who fail, in their office (v. 17-19),
nothing is said of the characteristics which are

280 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
essentially needful in an Elder. It is very
probable that the word ivio-KOTri] (which carries
with it the tov iirio-Koirov of the following verse)
is used in iii. i, because there is no word corre
sponding to trpeo-fivTepos which expresses the
office. Again, in v. 1 7, "Let the elders that rule
well {01 KaXws -irpoeo-TWTes irpeo-@vTepoi) be counted
worthy of double honour," it is implied that
government is the function of all Elders, but
that those who excel in their office are to receive
" double honour" ; and, further, irpoeo-TOiTes takes
up the idea of iTrio-Koiri], koXcos irpoeo-TcoTes being
virtually equivalent to KaX&s hrio-KoirovvTes.
The evidence of the corresponding passage in
Titus (i. 5 ff.) is not less clear — " For this cause
left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest . . .
appoint elders in every city, ... if any man is
blameless. . . . For the overseer [i.e. each man
who holds the office of ruler just spoken of]
must be blameless, as God's steward." The
"for" appears absolutely to require that the
class of church-officers referred to in the term
"the overseer" should be that to which "the
Elders" just mentioned belonged. It gives a
reason for the direction implied in the words,

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 281
"if any man is blameless," asserting (i) that
that character is essentially necessary {Sel), and
(2) that the reason of that necessity lies in the
fact that the Elder is nothing less than "God's
steward." It seems, therefore, impossible to explain St.
Paul's language in the Epistles to the Philip-
pians and in the Pastoral Epistles, except on
the supposition (i) that the term "overseer"
{iirio-Koiros) denotes a primary and essential
function of an "elder," and that therefore
the two terms "elder" and "overseer" are
synonymous ; (2) that the word " overseer " had
a definite meaning in St. Paul's vocabulary, and
was recognized as such by those Christians in
writing to whom he employs it. Whether or
not it was at this early date a current term in
other than Pauline Churches there is not suffi
cient evidence to shew.
When from this long digression we at length
turn back to the passage in the Acts, we find
that the use of the term "overseer" in the
speech is entirely in harmony with St. Paul's
use of it in the Epistles. Here it is doubtless
part of the pastoral metaphor — a metaphor

282 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
which had itself become part of the recognized
language of the Church. The force of the word
is greatly increased, if we suppose, as we have
independent reasons for supposing, that at least
in Pauline Churches it was a quasi- technical
term, expressing the functions of government
which were inseparable from the office of an
" Elder." For it is when a term has a specific
meaning that a skilful speaker or writer illumi
nates it by an allusion to its original meaning,
and by weaving it into a context of metaphor
(comp. i Cor. x. 2, Phil. iii. 2 f, Col. ii. 11,
1 Tim. v. 1, 1 Peter v. 1, 5).
The teaching of the speech as to the Church,
in which the Elders were to labour, cannot be
passed over in silence — " to feed the church of
God which he purchased with the blood of his
own [Son] {v. 28)." The phrase " the church of
God," carrying upward the idea of the Christian
society on earth, and immediately connecting
that society with Him "from whom are all
things," is common in St. Paul's writings,1 and
1 The expression is used by St. Paul (i.) of a local church, I Thess.
ii. 14, 2 Thess. i. 4, 1 Cor. i. 2, xi. 16, 2 Cor. i. 1 ; (ii.) of the Universal
Church, 1 Cor. a. 32, x v. 9, Gal. i. 13 ; (iii. ) in passages where it is not clear
whether the reference is local or universal, I Cor. xi. 22, 1 Tim. iii. 5, 15.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 283
is found nowhere else in the New Testament.
The descriptive words " which he purchased "
appear to shew that the speaker has in mind the
Universal Church spread throughout the world
— "the blessed company of all faithful people."
Hints of this conception of the Church appear in
those Pauline Epistles which belong to the third
missionary journey (1 Cor. x. 32, xii. 28, xv. 9,
Gal. i. 13) ; it is the dominating thought of the
Epistle to the " Ephesians." It must needs be
that the Elders' service of the Universal Church
was limited by their opportunities. They would
truly minister to the whole flock if they minis
tered to that part of the flock which was com
mitted to their care. The language in which
the speaker refers to the Church as a possession
acquired by God, closely allied to the apostolic
language about redemption, and ultimately de
rived from the Old Testament (Ex. xv. 16, Ps.
lxxiv. 2, Is. xliii. 21 (LXX.)), is not unfamiliar
to the student of St. Paul's Epistles (Eph. i. 14,
Titus ii. 14; 1 Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23, Rom. vi. 22).
And here the generosity and beneficence of
God's dealings with men are enhanced by the
description of the price paid. That price is

284 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
nothing less than "the blood of his own
[Son]." In the doctrine of the passage, when the text
has been thus restored by what I venture to con
sider Dr. Hort's certain conjecture,1 three points
claim attention, (i.) These words complete the
doctrine of the divine Sonship as expressed in the
Pauline speeches (ix. 20, xiii. 33 ; see above, pp.
1 74 ff). The Lord Jesus is the Son of God in a
unique and absolute sense — the Father's " own
Son." Such is the doctrine of St. Paul's Epistles
(see p. 191, n.). (ii.) The passage is in complete
conformity with St. Paul's habitual teaching
about redemption. God the Father is the ulti
mate source of salvation. The work of salvation
is His work. The Mediator through whom it is
wrought out is the incarnate Son {e.g. 1 Thess.
v. 9, 2 Cor. v. 18 ff, Rom. v. 8 ff, Col. i. 19 f,
Eph. i. 5 ff, Titus ii. 11 ff). In particular,
stress is laid by St. Paul in the Epistles, as
here, on the " blood " of Christ, His surrendered
life, as the price of man's redemption from sin
and of the divine purchase of man into a new
1 Dr. Hort (Introduction, Notes on Select Readings, p. 99) suggests
" that yiOY dropped out after TOyiAlOY at some very early transcription
affecting all existing documents."

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 285
slavery (Rom. iii. 25, v. 9, Col. i. 20, Eph. i. 7,
ii. 13). (iii.) Here we have an allusion to the
Three Persons of the Trinity, not in Their eternal
and essential relations, but as They are severally
concerned in the regeneration of man. If the
work of redemption is the work of the Father
through the mediation of the Son, it is the Holy
Spirit who dwells in and inspires the redeemed
Church. For such devotional allusions to the
Holy Trinity in St. Paul's Epistles, compare
2 Thess. ii. 13 f., 1 Cor. xii. 4 ff, 2 Cor. i. 21 f,
xiii. 13, Gal. iv. 4 ff, Eph. iv. 4 ff.
Such is "the Church of God," for whose
sake, in view of the dangers which were coming
upon it, the Elders were to be wakeful and active.
The charge laid upon them is "watch ye"
{ypr/yopeiTe) — " verbum pastorale" (Bengel).
The duty which in St. Paul's Epistles is enjoined
on all Christian men (1 Thess. v 6, 1 Cor. xvi.
13, Col. iv. 2) is here spoken of as in a peculiar
sense incumbent on the rulers of the Church (see
2 Tim. iv. 5 {vrjcpe) compared with 1 Thess. v. 6,
8). If they ask for guidance in the fulfilment of
this injunction, the Apostle points them to his
example when he lived and worked at Ephesus.

286 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
This pastoral charge is immediately followed
by the solemn words of final commendation :
" And now I commend you to God, and
to the word of his grace, even to him who is
able to build up and to give the inheritance
among all them that are sanctified1" {v. 32).
The speaker entrusts {-jrapaTidefiai) the Elders,
with their future full of manifold dangers,
and their present charged with responsibility
and labour, to God. God will watch over them
and guard them (comp. e.g. 1 Thess. iii. 12 f., •
2 Thess. iii. 3, 1 Cor. i. 8, Rom. xvi. 25, Phil.
iv. 19). In His hand they are placed as a
precious deposit {irapad^KT), 2 Tim. i. 12). Nay,
in a true and important sense, the Gospel which
these teachers were to proclaim, the Gospel of
God's universal benevolence in Christ, would
for them, as they apprehended it themselves
and announced it to others, become a saving
power. God worked for their good through
the very message which they were commis
sioned to deliver. But these words are, it
seems probable, parenthetical. The dominating
1 The words (t$ Svvaixivip . . . wdaiv) appear to express a truth
about God's dealing with His people generally.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 287
thought is the protecting care of .God, who
was "able" (Rom. xvi. 25, Eph. iii. 20; 2
Cor. ix. 8, Rom. xiv. 4, 2 Tim. ii. 12) to "build
up," and finally "to give the inheritance."
The former of these two metaphors, that of
building, is concerned with the present ; it deals
not so much with' individuals as with the whole
body of the faithful, its increase and its growing
unity and cohesion (comp. 1 Cor. iii. 9 ff, Eph.
ii. 20 ff, iv. 12 ff). The second metaphor, that
of the inheritance, refers to the future (Col. iii.
24, Eph. i. 14; comp. Heb. i. 14). The speaker
looks forward to the final gathering together
into the kingdom of God of " all them that are
sanctified," all the heirs of the divine promises,
whether under the old or under the new cove
nant (Eph. ii. 13 ff). Christian men are already
"fellow-citizens of the saints" (Eph. ii. 19);
already, that is, they are joined in the heavenly
polity with all those of old time who lived the
life of faith. In God's good time "the number
of the elect," of "all the saints" (1 Thess.
iii. 13, 2 Thess. i. 10; comp. Eph. iii. 18), will
be "accomplished." To that "day of Christ"
God is "able " to bring H is servants. These two

288 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
closely related thoughts, faith in God's power
to keep those that are His, and the assurance
of " the reward of the inheritance " (Col. iii. 24),
are, as here, brought together in a passage of
St. Paul's Epistle to the " Ephesians " in which
(as in our present passage) we catch an echo
of Deut. xxxiii. 3 f. — "that ye may know what
is the hope of your calling, what the riches of
the glory of his inheritance among the saints,
and what the exceeding greatness of his power
{Swdfieas) to usward who believe (i. 18 f.)." The
speaker's belief in the divine faithfulness to
wards those whom he commits to Him reaches
onward to the time of the final consummation
(1 Thess. ii. 19, iii. 13, 1 Cor. i 8, Phil. i. 6,
2 Tim. i. 12).
The missionary speeches which in the Acts
are put into the mouth of St. Paul cover, as
we have seen, a wide field. To the speech in
the synagogue of Antioch and to the two
speeches addressed to heathen, there is nothing
analogous in the Epistles of St. Paul. The
foregoing investigation of these speeches has,
I trust, been thorough ; I have not consciously

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 289
avoided any topic which might seem to throw
doubt on the position that they are ultimately
the product of St. Paul's mind. But in the
course of the discussion nothing has been dis
covered in regard either to language or to
thought which, under the supposed circum
stances, would have been unnatural in St.
Paul as we know him in his letters. On the
positive side, while these speeches are as far
as possible removed from being mere centos
of Pauline expressions, their phraseology and
their ideas present frequent and delicate points
of contact with the phraseology and ideas of
St. Paul's Epistles. We here handle threads
which we trace woven into the doctrinal and
devotional fabric of the Apostle's writings.
We discover in these speeches conceptions in
a general and elementary form to which in the
Epistles a matured expression is given, and
which are there found in their theological con
text. A comparison of other New Testament
documents justifies us in regarding these con
ceptions, in their earlier as in their later pre
sentation, as characteristically Pauline.
A writer who was drawing on his own
u

290 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
imagination would almost inevitably have
pictured the Apostle, on the few occasions
when he recorded his supposed utterances, as
proclaiming the essential truths of the Gospel,
and as reaping a large harvest of converts. In
the speech at Lystra, however, there is nothing
— in the speech at Athens there is very little —
which is distinctively Christian. At Lystra the
only issue of the missionary's appeal is that
the crowds were hardly dissuaded from offering
sacrifice to him and his companion ; at Athens,
only "certain clave unto him, and believed."
It is not too much to say that such speeches,
with such meagre results, cannot be the in
vention of a romancer, of whose history St.
Paul is the chief hero.
The speech at Miletus deals with a situation
which has many points of similarity to the
different occasions which called forth St. Paul's
letters. We find, accordingly, as we should
expect to find, that in this speech the language
and the thoughts bear the closest resemblance
to the language and the thoughts of St. Paul's
Epistles. Moreover — and this is of still greater
significance — in the speech and in the Epistles

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 291
we discern the same religious temper and the
same combination of human qualities — eager
ness and tenderness, humility and self-assertion,
steadfastness and awe in face of danger. In
a word, the speech is inspired by that complex
Pauline character which is familiar to the
sympathetic student of the Epistles, but which
defies exact analysis and definite statement.
It is, however, only when these speeches
are regarded as a series that their evidential
value is fully appreciated. We can imagine a
disciple of St. Paul, or a student of St. Paul's
writings, composing with fair success a con
troversial Pauline speech on the model of the
Epistle to the Galatians, and a pastoral Pauline
speech on the model of the Epistle to the
Philippians. But to invent four Pauline
speeches, for three of which the Epistles supply
no pattern, each appropriate to its alleged
occasion, each diverse from the other three, each
congruous with St. Paul's character, each con
taining (though not all in the same proportion)
resemblances, often subtle and always unobtru
sive, to the style and phraseology of St. Paul's
Epistles — this would have been a literary and

292 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
psychological feat demanding extraordinary
dramatic power. The " traditional " view of
these Pauline speeches in the Acts is simple
and adequate ; it explains the phenomena. I
venture to think that the unbiassed scholar,
whether he regards the problem from the stand
point of the theologian or from that of the
literary critic, will recognise St. Paul's mind,
which we know in the Epistles, as the mind
which finds expression in those speeches of
the Acts which the writer of the Book puts
into the mouth of that Apostle.
We have now completed the investigation
to which in the first lecture I invited you.
We have followed the writer of the Acts of
the Apostles along the main road of history,
which is traced out in the opening page of the
Book. It remains that we should briefly
review the ground which we have traversed.
The account of the events of the Day of
Pentecost is felt by many to present serious
difficulties. It would be too much to say that
our examination of these problems has supplied
a final solution in each case ; but it has at least

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 293
shewn that they are capable of a reasonable
solution, and has moreover indicated the kind
of solution to which further study and thought
may be expected to attain.
The history of the growth of the Church,
its expansion from Jerusalem to Rome, and the
inclusion of Gentiles within its boundaries, is
simple and natural, wholly unlike what would
have been evolved out of the imagination of
a romance-writer. The insignificance of the
events which form the turning-points of the
narrative, the existence in the record of
obscurities, and the hints which it contains
from time to time of an unrecorded background
of history, are a strong guarantee of substantial
truthfulness. The speeches which are put into the mouth
of the two great Apostles, St. Peter and St.
Paul, are, in regard to doctrine, thought, and
language, marked by wide differences. The
teaching of St. Peter is in complete harmony
with the alleged historical environment. It
bears clear and emphatic testimony to the
resurrection and exaltation of the Lord Jesus,
and finds in these events a divine reversal of

294 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
Israel's act of condemnation and rejection.
But it does not dwell on their spiritual signifi
cance. It moves within the circle of Jewish
Messianic hopes and stands in striking contrast
to the presentation of Christian truth found in
the Apostolic Epistles. In a word, the Petrine
speeches in the Acts exemplify a type of
Christian thought which was tentative and
immature, and which it would have been
exceedingly difficult for a Pauline Christian,
writing more than a quarter of a century later,
to reproduce by an effort of the imagination.
The speeches of St. Paul, while they har
monize with the circumstances which are said
to have called them forth, and while in substance
and in tone they are widely separated from each
other, all contain Pauline characteristics, and
are such as might well have been the utterances
of the Apostle whose letters we know. The
silence of the two speeches addressed to
heathen audiences as to details of Christian
doctrine, though entirely explicable by the
circumstances of their delivery, is a convincing
argument against the theory that they are the
invention of the writer. The Apostle's witness

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 295
to Jews and to unconverted Gentiles could not
have been manufactured on the model of St.
Paul's Epistles, yet it is in harmony with the
teaching of the Epistles, and touches on
thoughts which are characteristic of St. Paul,
and which in the Epistles are expounded in
their theological context. The speech at
Miletus, the matter of which is cognate with
the matter of many passages of the Epistles,
though it is not a mere echo of their phrase
ology, is in substance, in manner, and in spirit
thoroughly and consistently Pauline.
Though, then, it is not denied that the
speeches, more especially those of St. Peter,
have been edited by the writer of the Acts and
owe to him their present literary form, it has
been shewn, I venture to think, that it is a
moral impossibility for them to have been
conceived and composed by him.
A reasonable account has been given of the
preservation of the substance and (within certain
limits) of the language of these discourses, if
the author of the Acts be St. Luke. And
further, if the " we-sections " of the Acts
receive their natural interpretation, and the

296 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
evidence of St. Paul's Epistles as to St. Luke
be taken into account, it appears that the
Evangelist was brought into personal com
munication with those who could give him full
and trustworthy information as to each part of
the history which he has included in his Book.
Thus the " traditional " view of the Book,
which we know to have been that of the Christian
society since the time of Irenseus, stands the
test of careful and thorough investigation, and
may claim to be accounted the" critical " view.
It is not of course maintained that the Book
presents a full and faultless account of the
period which it covers. The scientific critic,
who on good grounds is assured of the general
credibility of the Book, is ready and anxious to
consider dispassionately the degree of accuracy
which can be rightly ascribed to the record of
any particular event.
The reference to Theudas in the speech of
Gamaliel (v. 36 f.) is the most conspicuous
example of one type among the problems of
which no certain solution has yet been given.
In that speech the rising of Theudas is explicitly
spoken of as earlier in date than that of "Judas

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 297
of Galilee in the days of the enrolment."
But the date of "the enrolment" is a.d. 7;
and the Theudas whom Josephus {Antiq.
xx. v. 1) mentions was hunted down and
beheaded in the procuratorship of Fadus
(a.d. 44). The explanation of the difficulty
given by Bishop Lightfoot and others — that
Theudas is not an uncommon name, and that
the Theudas of St. Luke is not the Theudas of
Josephus, but "one of the many pretenders of
whom Josephus speaks as troubling the peace
of the nation about this time (Joseph. Ant. xvii.
x. 8, B.J. 11. iv. 1), without, however, giving
their names " — is probably the true solution of
the problem. But if, for the sake of argument,
we disallow this and any similar explanation,
and admit that in the speech of Gamaliel there
is a serious chronological blunder, how does
this admission affect the general credibility of
the Acts ? The history breaks off at Rome
some two years after St. Paul's arrival there.
From St. Paul's Epistles we know that St.
Luke was with him in Rome during at least a
portion of his captivity. These notices supply
the only clue which we have as to the place

298 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
and date of the composition of the Acts. If,
then, we suppose that St. Luke wrote his Book
after St. Paul's release and departure from the
city, or after his death, it follows that the Book
took its present shape when the author had lost
the guidance of his chief authority. There is
no reason to suppose that St. Luke had a
minute acquaintance with the details of the
tangled history of Judsea during the previous
seventy years. And it might well be that, in
filling out his notes of the account which
he had received (probably from St. Paul) of
Gamaliel's speech, he inserted the name of a
Jewish insurgent which he happened to recall,
but as to whose chronological position he
was mistaken. At the worst, then, St. Luke
appears guilty of ignorance as to the history of
Judsea and of carelessness as an editor. We
should not feel compelled to doubt the general
trustworthiness of a historian of Indian missions
if, writing at a distance and without access to
documents and old newspapers, in an incidental
allusion he made a serious blunder and confused
two of the many native chieftains who from
time to time have risen against English rule.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 299
A much more serious question confronts us
in the miraculous and supernatural element in
the Book. Probably to many minds the real
objection against the credibility of the Acts is
to be found in such a history as that of the
raising of Dorcas, or that of St. Peter's release
from prison through the agency of an angel.
It would be cowardly to bring this course of
lectures to a close and leave this question or
this group of questions unnoticed. My en
deavour to deal with it must needs in some
sense take the form of a confession of faith.
I believe that the life of our Lord Jesus
Christ on earth stands absolutely apart from
all other human lives ; for I believe that, when
He was conceived and born, the Word of God
took flesh, and that for many years the
Incarnate Word dwelt among men. This faith,
received in early childhood, I hold to-day with
conscious conviction, because toward it many
lines of evidence — intellectual, moral, and
spiritual — seem to me to converge. In par
ticular, the Resurrection appears to me to be an
historical event, resting on adequate testimony
and confirmed by the life of the Church from

300 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
the first day until now. I have not — I cannot
have — any a priori notions of what the life
on earth of God Incarnate would be. But
since I believe that through the Word God
is immanent in creation, it appears to me
reasonable to expect that in the human life
of the Incarnate Word there would be much
transcending common experience. All the
accounts of that Life affirm that He wrought
miracles. My belief in the Divinity of the
Lord Jesus Christ is not based on, is not
even strengthened by, the miracles which
are recorded of Him. I can believe the
miracles, because I believe that He was God
manifest in the flesh. That human life has a
place absolutely unique. The miracles con
nected with that Life stand apart. I do not
question that an intense faith in Him — allied
to, but transcending, the power of the human
will — may have been allowed at a crisis of
revelation to produce effects which are denied
to faith at other times. I am sure that the
best men of that earliest Christian generation
did believe that such effects were wrought
(i Cor. xii. 9 f, 28 ff, 2 Cor. xii. 12, Gal.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 301
iii. 5, Rom. xv. 19, Hebr. ii. 4 ; comp.
[Mark] xvi. 17 f, 20). But my spiritual and
intellectual attitude towards the record of these
miracles must be different from my spiritual
and intellectual attitude towards the record
of the miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ. It
would be no shock to my faith as a Christian,
if I felt assured that the author of the Book
of the Acts or his informants, having the
events of the Lord's life on earth vividly before
their minds, gave a supernatural interpretation
to what were in truth providential interventions
within what we term the sphere of the natural
order. Beyond this point I find it impossible
to go in the direction either of affirmation or
of denial. If, then, the Book of the Acts suggests prob
lems, historical, psychological, and religious,
towards which we must be content to stand
in the attitude of suspended judgment, we
may, I believe, approach the further con
sideration of these questions, and wait for
further evidence and for fuller light, assured
that there speaks to us in that Book an
honest and well-informed Christian man, the

302 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
companion and friend of St. Paul — St. Luke,
"the beloved physician."

Little did I think, when hardly more than
two months ago I invited you to consider the
subject which we have just laid aside, that this
course of lectures would conclude on a Sunday
so memorable, so sadly memorable, as this.
We know, but we scarcely realize, that since
last Sunday the longest, the greatest, probably
the most eventful reign in all English history
has ended. We know, but we scarcely realize,
that the Queen whom our parents, when they
were still young, learned to reverence and love,
and whom they taught us to reverence and
love, loyalty towards whom has deepened with
the knowledge and the convictions of maturer
years, has passed away. We often wondered
what it would be when the Queen was taken
from her people. But we always put the
thought quickly away. We had never known
our country apart from our Queen. It did not
seem possible that we should ever so know it.
At last the inevitable hour has come.

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 303
Once or twice in a lifetime there is given
to most of us that strange, experience, that
sad but almost triumphant thankfulness, that
wonderful mingling of sorrow and of peace,
with which we look back over a long and useful
life brought at length to its full completeness.
It is so now. We mourn the Queen to-day
with the mourning of sons and daughters.
We cannot say much. We are oppressed
with a sense of the indignity of hasty words,
of the poverty and inadequacy even of rightful
words. History, when the secrets of the great
crises of tke Queen's reign and of the part she
bore in them are fully disclosed to our children
and our children's children — history will pass
its calm and impartial verdict on the Queen.
We cannot read that verdict now. We do
not fear what that verdict will be.
Yet, even here and now, we cannot but
give expression to some simple and obvious
thoughts. We think of the greatness, the true great
ness, of the Queen's life. The voice of
vulgar adulation is hushed in the presence of
Death. But what I venture to say is within

304 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
the limits of the soberest truth. The life
through the providence of God has been great
in its opportunity. The current of national and
imperial change which has flowed so strong
during the last seventy years, might have been
broken into dangerous eddies had it struck
upon the rock of a headstrong sovereign's
prejudices. It has been guided and controlled
and calmed by the unobtrusive influence of a
woman's tact, trained, as decade after decade
has passed by, by a ripening experience and
knowledge of affairs, unique in the annals of
monarchy. The life has been great in the
qualities which all now recognize — a strong
will curbed by a deep and religious sense of
overwhelming obligations ; an instinctive per
ception of the feeling of her people ; a keen
enjoyment of all that was good and wholesome
in English life, yet which never used the
prerogatives of power as a means for securing
personal gratification ; a royal mind which recog
nised the awful seriousness of sovereignty, but
which was never so overwhelmed with imperial
cares as to forget to rejoice with those of her
subjects who rejoiced, and to weep with those

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 305
of them who wept ; and these qualities rooted
and fixed in the fear and in the love of God.
We think of the compass of the Queen's
life. The reign began almost on the morrow
of the Reform Bill. It has been prolonged
into a new century. And all the changes
in Church and State during those many years
— changes the issues of which have been the
confirmed stability of our great institutions — the
Queen watched, always, we are told, labouring
for peace, always controlling her personal
judgment by a scrupulous observance of the
limits of a constitutional monarchy. And if
we take a wider view, we remember how the
Queen presided over the reorganization and
development of England's vast Indian Empire;
how she fostered the growth of English
colonies, till from little more than straggling
and rude settlements they have become mighty
commonwealths, bound to each other and bound
to the Mother Country by ties of a common
loyalty, ties knit more firmly by the common
sacrifices of the last year and by the common
grief of to-day. Nor can we forget the smaller
world of the University, so dear to ourselves.
x

306 HULSEAN LECTURES lect.
The era of the Queen's reign has been an era
of change to Cambridge. Twice in her reign
— once, indeed, when her royal Consort was
our Chancellor — did her Majesty give her
sanction to statutes which essentially modified
the constitution of the University as it had
been ordained nearly three centuries earlier by
the Statutes of Elizabeth. But legislative
enactments, I need not remind you, are no
measure of the transformation, the happy
transformation, which has passed over the aims,
the methods, and the social life of this place
since the Queen's accession. We have but
to review the history of our own University,
and we learn something of the compass of the
Queen's life.
We think of the completeness of the Queen's
life. It has been complete in all the sacred
relations of an English home — the life of trie
wife, the mother, the ancestress of royal houses ;
complete and perfected by many sorrows — even,
we dare to say, by that signal sorrow which
for forty years has left "the Crown a lonely
splendour " ; complete in the scarcely less sacred
relations of the larger household of the nation,

iv THE CREDIBILITY OF THE ACTS 307
known to be complete when the two great
jubilee thanksgivings revealed to all the world
the Queen's trust and pride in her people, and
the people's trust and pride in their Queen.
The life we may now reverently pronounce as
happy, happy in its completeness.
And now in the midst of these solemn days
when the past and the future of English history
— the past with its wonderful blessings, the
future with its unknown possibilities — con
spicuously meet before our eyes, we bring
our grief and our hope into the presence of
Almighty God.
We pray — for we are sure that the Queen
often so prayed, and would have wished us so
to pray — for the Empire, that God will make
this great national sorrow a wholesome dis
cipline to chasten and to correct our sins and
shortcomings in Church and in State, — our
pride, our waywardness, our luxury, our for-
getfulness of God ; that, as sometimes, when
the sun has set, we are still conscious of his
influence in the soft twilight of holy calm, so
in her own England and in the world the
x 2

308 HULSEAN LECTURES lect. iv
remembrance of the Queen may be a power
making for peace, so that to her very memory
may be vouchsafed the blessing of the peace
makers. We pray — for we are sure that the Queen
often so prayed, and would have wished us so
to pray — for him who has now become our
King, that he may reign over us, as she reigned
so long, in the faith and fear of God, supported
by God's strength and guidance, upheld by
wise and patriotic counsellors, loved and
honoured by his subjects.
And for her — for her long reign, for her
goodness, for her wisdom, for the purity of
her Court and the white stainlessness of her
life, for her example, for her unstinted service
of her own generation — yes, and even for this,
that by the will of God she fell asleep with
out the sorrow of a long decay, we thank God.

INDEX

Acts of the Apostles, date, 9,
28, 297 f. ; place of composition,
297 f. ; relation to St. Luke's
Gospel, 6 f. , 16 f. ; plan, 29 f. ;
gaps in the writer's knowledge,
24 f. , 27 ; relation to the Epistles
of St. Paul, 26 f., 91 ff., 168-292
passim, 294 f. ; passages com
mented on, i. r, p. 52 ; i. 3 ff.
p. 29 ; i. 8, pp. 47 ff. ; ii. 17, p
59 ; ii. 22, p. 142 ; ii. 23, p. 147
ii. 33 f., p. 151 ; ii. 36, pp. 123 f.
154 ff. ; ii. 39, p. S9 I 'ii- *3. P
124 ; iii. 14, pp. r32 ff. ; iii. 16
p. i2T ; iii. 25, p. 124 ; iii. 26
p. 60; vii. 52, pp. 133 ff. ; viii. 1
pp. 49 f. ; viii. 39, p. 67 n. ; ix
20 ff. , pp. 174, 177 ; ix. 3r, p
50; ix. 32, p. 75 ; x. ir ff.
pp. 78 f. ; xi. 18, p. 80 ; xi. 19
pp. 82 ff. ; xi. 28, p. 5 ; xiii. 2
p. 86 ; xiii. 17, p. 179 ; xiii. 29
p. r84 n. ; xiii. 32 ff. , pp. 187 ff.
xiii. 34 f. , pp. 180 ff. ; xiii. 39, pp
191 ff. ; xiii. 46 ff. , p. 89 ; xv
23 ff. , pp. 93 ff. ; xvii. 18, pp
204 f. ; xvii. 19, pp. 207, 209
xvii. 22, pp. 212 f. ; xvii. 23, pp
216 f. ; xvii. 26, pp. 222 f . ; xvii
28, pp. 225 f. ; xvii. 30, p. 221 n.
xx. 18, p. 236 ; xx. 20, 27, pp.
254 ff. ; xx. 28, pp. 2.71, 273 ff.
xx. 29, pp. 263 f. ; xx. 30, pp
268 ff. ; xx. 32, pp. 286 ff.
xxii. 14, pp. 133 ff. ; xxiv. 2 ff. ,

p. in; xxvin. 28, p. 100; xxvm.
31, pp. 100 f.
Agora, the, at Athens, 204 f. , 209
Altar (dyvtl)<TTh> Bet$), 216 f.
Antioch in Pisidia, 89 ; St. Paul's
speech at, 179 ff
Antioch, the Syrian, 5, 8r, 84,
90
Apocalypse, xxii. 20, p. 155 n.
Apostles, dispersion of the, 75
Aramaic, 154
Aratus, 226 n.
Archaeology, 7 f.
Areopagus, the, 207 ff.
Athens, St. Paul's speech at, 204 ff.,
290 ; St. Paul's silence as to
Christian doctrine at, 231 f. ;
small success at, 233 f.
aKwXvrws, 101
avdaraCLS, misunderstood by the
Athenians, 205 f.
dvaffTijaai, 188 n.
dvbpes dSeXipoi, 123
dpxvybs, 129 f.
&<bi^is, 263 ff.
Background of facts implied, 33,
75, 151 f., 180
Baptism, the, of the Lord, 141,
189
Baruch, Apocalypse of, 55, 65, 124,
136, 192, 199
Benedictions, the Eighteen, 39, 124.
13° ff-. '39
Bengel, 232, 269 f. , 285

3°9

310

HULSEAN LECTURES

Bezae, Codex, 5
Blasphemy, the Lord crucified for,
148 f.
Blass, Prof., 5 f., 205 n.
Blood, 95 f. ; the Blood of Christ,
284 f.
" Brethren,1' 94 f.
Building, metaphor of, 287
Burial, the, of the Lord, 184
Caesarea, 79
' ' Cevennes, The Little Prophets of
the," 38 n.
Charles, Dr., 176 n.
Christ, the Person of, 125 ff. , 135,
140, 154 ft, 174 ff. , 187 ff. , 232,
282 ff. , 299 f.
" Christian," the name, 84 ff.
Chronology, the, of the Acts, 68 n.
Chrysostom, 207 n.
Church, the, the new Israel, 48 f. ,
277 ; as God's own possession,
283 ; "the Church (Churches) of
God," 282
Circumcision, controversy about,
90 ff.
Cleanthes, 226
Clement of Alexandria, 10, 101
Clement of Rome, 140
Collection, the, for the poor at
Jerusalem, 257 ff.
Colossae, false teaching at, 269
Colossians, Epistle to the, ii. 1, p.
236
Comparative, the, quasi-superlative
force of, 213 n.
Contemporary Review, 38 n.
Conversion of Saul of Tarsus, 69 ff.
Cook, Mr. A. B. , 206 n.
Corinthians, the, questions of, 97 ;
gift of tongues among, 36 ff. ;
First Epistle to, i. ii. , pp. 233 f. ;
i. if., p. 95 ; vii. 10, p. 252 ; xii.
3, p. 149 ; xv. 8, p. 72 ; xv. 32,
p. 238 ; xv. 54 f. , p. 181 ; xvi.
9, p. 238 ; Second Epistle to,
general tone, 246 ff. ; ii. 17, iv.
2, pp. 253 f.

Cornelius, 79 f.
Creed, the earliest Christian, 157
Creighton, Bishop, 159 ff.
Curtius, Dr. E. , 207 n.
Cyprus, 86 f.
Dalman, Prof. , 39 n. , 127 f., 132 n.,
134. i36. 139 n-. !54 n-. 1S6
Damascus, St. Paul's preaching at,
174 ff
Deuteronomy, xii. 15, p. 79 ; xxi.
22 f., pp. 148 ff, 183 ff.
Diary of travel, 1 1
Didachi, the, 140, 155
Diognetus, Epistle to, 140
Dispersion, the, 60, 94, 123
Divinity, the, of Jesus Christ, 158,
174 ff. , 190 f. , 284 f. 299 f.
Documents, possible use of, in Acts,
8, 15 f. , 120
Driver, Dr., 136 n.
SeiaiSaifxijiv , 212 n.
diaffwaprjvai, 65
Edersheim, Dr., 31, 134, 136,
199 n.
Elymas, 86 f.
Enoch, Book of, 55, 133 f, , 146,
175 f., 265
"Ephesians," Epistle to the, 23
Ephesus, St. Paul's long stay at,
236 ; his trials at, 237 ff.
Epistles, the, of St. Paul, relation
to Acts, 26 f. , 91 ff. , 168-292
passim
Esdras, Second Book of, 145 f. ,
176, 192 f. , 265
Eunuch, the Ethiopian, 66 f.
Evidence, the, of the Resurrection
and Exaltation, 152 f. , 185 f.
Ewald, 123
Exaltation, the, of the Lord, 150 ff.
Ezekiel, ii. 1, p. 71 ; iv. 14, p. 79
iyeipeiv, 188 n.
iKS'rjfjnjo'ai, 4vS7]f/,7Jo~ai, 264
4wIo~kowoi, 275 ff.
iwl t6 abrb, 31
e"it)S iaxarov rijs yrfs, 50 f.

INDEX

3»

Fadus, the Procurator, 297
False teachers, 268 ff.
Field, Dr. F., 213 n.
Frazer, Dr. J. G. , 206 n., 209 n.,
216 n.
Galatia, Province of, 89
Galatians, Epistle to the, i. ii. ,
pp. 91 ff. ; i. 15 f., pp. 72 f.,
177 ; ii. 9, p. 74 ; iii. 10, 13, p.
181
Galen, 112 n.
Gentiles, the, Jewish view of, 54 ff. ,
80, 88, 90 ff. ; the Lord's rela
tion to, 56 f. ; call of, 67 ff. ,
79 f. ; position in the Church,
90 ff.
Glossolalia, 35 ff.
Gospel according to St. Luke, the,
Preface of, 16 ff. ; relation to the
Acts, 6f., 16 ff.
Grace, the Jewish, 39, 199
Greek spoken in Palestine, 114 ff
Habakkuk, i. 5, ii. 4, pp. 194 f.
Habinenu, 139
Hanging, death by, on a tree, 148
ff., 183 ff.
Harnack, Prof. , 9 n. , 28
Hastings, Dr., Dictionary of the
Bible, articles on Acts, 8 n. ; on
Joppa, 77 n. ; on Maranatha,
155 n. ; on St. Mark, 22 n. , 87 ;
on St. Peter, 22 n. , 75 n. , 115
n., 176 n. ; on 1 Peter, 115 n.
Hawkins, Sir J., 12 f.
Headlam, Mr. A. C, 8 n., 222
Heathen world, the, 202 f. , 210 ff. ;
God's dealings with, 217 ff.
Hebrews, Epistle to the, use of
LXX. in, 116 ; xiii. 22, p. 179 n.
Hellenists and Hebrews, 62, 119,
137 ff.
Hippolytus, 10
History, philosophy of, 225
Hobart, Dr., 13 f.
Holy, the, One, 132 ff. .
Hort, Dr. , 95, 98 f. , 269, 284

James, St., 21, 76, 93 ; Epistle of,
use of LXX. in, 116
James, Dr. M. R. , 131 n.
Iaso, the goddess, 205 n.
Idolatry, 95 ff., 202 f. ; St. Paul's
view of, 210 ff.
Jebb, Sir R. C. , 213 n.
Jeremiah, a type of St. Paul, 71
Jerusalem, 49, 51 f. ; "Council"
at, 90 ff. ; St. Paul's journey to,
257 ff-
Jews, the, plots of, 238 ff.
Ignorance of the heathen, 214 ff.
Immanence, the divine, in the
world, 227 f.
Inheritance, metaphor of, 287
John, St. , Gospel according to, xx.
19 ff. , p. 41 ; First Epistle of,
ii. 1, 20, p. 135
Joppa, 77
Josephus, 30, 79, 84, 144, 148,
264 n. , 297
Jowett, Prof. , 198 n.
Irenaeus, 10, 23, 296
Isaiah, vi. 9 f. , pp. 99 f. ; xKi. 1
ff. , p. 138; xliii. 9 ff. , p. 47;
xlix. 6, p. 50 ; lv. 3, p. 182
Isis, 205 n.
Israel, Jehovah's son, 175; "the
whole house of Israel," 123 f. ;
"this people Israel," 179 f.
Judas of Galilee, 296 f.
Judges, Book of, 129 f.
Judgment, the final, 231, 287
Jiilicher, Prof., 9, 107
Justification, doctrine of, 191 ff.
Justin Martyr, 189
'Iijo-oOs, connected by the Athenians
with taais (tijo-is), 205 n.
'lovSaia, 49 n.
Kaddish, the, 124
King, the, of Israel, Jehovah's son,
175, 188 f.
Kirkpatrick, Dr., 136 n.
Kiipios, 154 ff.
Lamentations, Book of, iv. 20, p. 156

312

HULSEAN LECTURES

Language, the, of St. Peter's
speeches, 114 ff.
Lessons read in the synagogue, 180
Letter, the, of the "Council" at
Jerusalem, 93 ff.
Lightfoot, Bishop, 212, 230, 268
n. , 297
Lord (our Lord), 154 ff.
Lord's sayings, the, early collection
of, 251 ff.
Lots, use of, 42
Luke, St., in St. Paul's Epistles,
n ; at Jerusalem and in Pales
tine, 20 f. ; at Rome, 21, 297; a
Gentile, 92 ; possibly able to use
shorthand, 112 n. ; acquainted
with medical phraseology, 13 f. ;
changes the form of the Lord's
sayings in the Gospel, 109 f.
Luther, 26
Lystra, St. Paul's speech at, 195
ff. , 290 ; St. Paul silent as to
Christianity, 203 f.
Maccabees, the, First Book of, xiv.
5, p. 77; Second Book of, i. 1,
pp. 94 f. ; Third Book of, vii. 18,
p. 264 n. ; Fourth Book of, 123
Mar, 134 ff. ; Marana, 155 ; Mar-
ana/ha, 155 n.
Mark, St., "interpreter" of St.
Peter, 116 ; probably an inform
ant of St. Luke, 21 f., 77, 87 f.
Matthew, St. , Gospel according to,
xii. 18 ff. , p. 138
Matthias, St. , choice of, 42
Medical language, use of, in the
Acts, 13 f.
Messiah, the, Jewish hope of, 125
ff. ; relation to the Messianic
people, 126, 134, 176 ; pre
destination of, 146 ; ' ' Son of
God," 174 ff. ; suffering and
death of, 145, 178, 234
Miletus, St. Paul's speech at, 235
ff. , 290 f. ; how preserved, 112,
170 f.
Milman, Dean, 162 f.

Ministry, the Lord's, 141 ; the
Christian, 271 ff.
Miracles, the Lord's, 142 f. , 299 f. ;
in Judaea, 143 f. ; significance
of, 143 f. ; in the Apostolic age,
299 ff.
Muratorian fragment on the Canon
ofN.T, 10
Nations, the, relation of, to Israel,
54 ff. ; see also Gentiles
Nature, different views of, 200 f. ;
witness of, to God, 198 ff.
6Bbvq, 78
oTkos, 31 f.
ojs, 213 n.
Pastoral Epistles, the, imply St.
Paul's release, 262 f. ; the false
teaching combated in, 269 ;
Christian ministry described in,
277 ff.
Pastoral office, the, self-discipline
needed, 271 f. ; catholic, 272 ;
source, 273 ff. ; character, 275 ff,
Paul, St. , persecutor, 65, 266 f. ;
conversion of, 68 ff. ; different
elements in the workof 168 f. ;
as evangelist, 168 ; as an Apostle
to Israel, 74 ;[ as Apostle of
the Gentiles, 71, 73, 88 ; at
Damascus, 174 ff. ; at Antioch
in Syria, 81 ff. , 90; in Cyprus,
86 f. ; becomes chief of the mis
sionary band, 87 ; at Perga, 87
ff. ; at Antioch in Pisidia, 89,
179 ff. ; at Lystra, 195 ff. ; con
troversy as to circumcision, 90
ff. ; at Thessalonica, 197, 230,
246 ff. ; at Athens, 204 ff. ; at
Corinth, 233 f. ; at Ephesus, 236
ff. ; collection for the Saints at
Jerusalem, 98 f., 260 ff. ; at
Miletus, 234 ff. ; at Rome, 23,
52, 99 f. ; release from his Roman
captivity, 262 f. ; at Ephesus,
262 ; probably ignorant of parts

INDEX

313

of Gospel history, 184 f. ; know
ledge of our Lord's sayings, 251
f . ; no sense of beauty of nature,
198 ; love for Israel, 239 ; dili
gence in manual work, 249 f. ;
teacher of spiritual "wisdom,"
255 f. ; of common duties, 256
f. ; language about death, 263 f. ;
love for "all the flock," 272;
method of quotation from O. T. ,
180 ff. ; sense of importance of
history, 19'; St. Luke's informant,
19^,69, 120, 171 f. ; "theology"
of, 174 ff. , 189 ff., 227 f. , 282 ff.
Paul, St., speeches of, selection in
Acts, 171 f. ; as a series, 291 f. ;
how preserved, in ff. ; compared
with St. Peter's speeches, 169,
177, 184 ff, 187, 293 f. ; with
St. Paul's Epistles, e.g. 194, 200
ff. , 210 ff. , 220 f. , 227 ff. , 238
ff. , 243 ff. , 257 ff. , 271 ff. , 289
ff. , 294 f.
Pentecost, the Day of, 30 ff, 114,
117, 292 f. ; significance of, 40 ft.
Perga, 87 ff.
Persecution, 65, 265 ff.
Peter, St., at Jerusalem, 59 ff. , 122
ff. ; leaves Jerusalem, 75 ff. ;
at Joppa, 77 ff. ; at Cassarea,
79 ff. ; at Rome, 22 ff. , 121
Peter, St. , speeches of, as a series,
122 ; original language, 114 ff. ;
how preserved, 117 ff. ; St. Peter
possibly St. Luke's informant, 22
ff. , 121 ; relation to 1 Peter, 121 ;
relation to Pauline>speeches, 169,
185, 187, 293 f. ; their doctrinal
character, 158 f. , 293 f.
Peter, St., First Epistle of, i. 21,
p. 121
Pharisees, the, 63
Philip the Evangelist, 20, 66 ff.
Philippians, Epistle to the, i. 1, p.
278
Plato, 228
Plumptre, Dean, 38 n.
Polycarp, martyrdom of, 140

Prayers, Jewish, 124, 134, 137 n.,
139, 155 n.
Predestination of the Messiah, 146 f.
Preface to St. Luke's Gospel, 16 ff.
Promise, the Messianic, 188
Psalms, ii. 7, pp. 188 f. ; xvi. p.
185; Ixvii. (Ixviii.) 19, p. 151
Psalms, the, of Solomon, 51, 55,
124, 130 f., 133, 142, 146, 156,
187 n.
wais, 137 ff.
wapaKX-qaeajs, Xbyos, 179 n.
wXij&os, 32
W0lfl7}V, 276 ff.
wpo'Cardp-evoi, 01, 277 f.
Quotation from O.T., St. Paul's
method of, 180 ff.
Rabbonana, 155
" Raise up, to," 129, 188 n.
Ramsay, Prof., 7, 36, 208 n.
Readings, discussion of, 5, 81 ff.,
187 n. , 284
Redemption, 282 ff.
Resch, Dr. , 189 n.
Righteous One, the, 132 ff.
Romans, the Epistle to the, i. i, 7,
p. 95 ; i. 3 f., p. 190 ; hi. 25 f.,
pp. 219 ff. ; vii. viii., pp. 191 f. ;
xv. 30 ff. , pp. 258 f.
Rome, 21 ff. , 51 f., 85, 99 ff. ,
297 f.
Ryle, Bishop H. E. , 131 n.
Salmon, Dr., 6
Samaria, 49, 66
Samuel, Second Book of, vii. 12, p.
188
Sanday, Dr., 222 n.
Saviour (salvation), 129 ff. , 284 f.
Schoettgen, 77 n.
Schiirer, Dr., 39 n., 180
Septuagint, the, 13, 116, 138, 181 f.
Servant, the, of the Lord, 135 ff.
Shema, the, 39, 122 f.
Shepherd, the metaphor of the,
276 f.

3H

HULSEAN LECTURES

Shorthand, use of, in f.
Sibylline Oracles, 130
Smith, Prof. G. A., 77 n.
Smith, Prof. Robertson, 96
"Son of God," 174 ff, 187 ff, 284
Sources of the Acts, 8, 14 ff. , no
ff, 171 f., 195 f., 295 f.
Spirit, the Holy, 40 ff. , 141 f. , 153,
273 ff.
Stephen, St., 62 f. ; speech of,
182 f.
Stoics, the, 205, 214, 223, 226 f. ,
229
Strangled, things, 95 f.
Swete, Dr., 34 n. , 116 n.
awepfioXbyos, 205 n.
GbiT'qp (o-brrypia), 206 n.
Tanner, trade of a, 77
Targum, 136
Taylor, Dr. C. , 155 n.
Temple, the, the place of the Pente
costal gift, 30 ff.
Tertullian, 10, 86
Text, the, of the Acts, 5 ff, 81 ff,
187 n. , 284
Thayer, Dr., 155 n.
Theclae, Acta, 140, 204
Thessalonica, St. Paul's preaching
at, 230
Theudas, 296 ff.
" This people Israel," 179 f.
Timothy, First Epistle to, iii. 1 ff. ,
p. 279 ; v. 17, p. 280 ; vi. 3, p.
252

Titus, Epistle to, i. 5 ff. , pp. 280 f.
Tongues, "like as of fire," 33 ff. ;
the gift of, 35 ff.
Trinity, work of the Holy, in man's
salvation, 285
Tubingen School, 8 f.
rlBeaBai, 273 f.
Unity, of the human race, 40, 222
ff. ; of the Church, 91

167,

Victoria, Queen, death of,
302 ff.
Visions, St. Peter's vision, 78 ; in
connexion with St. Paul's con
version, 70 n.
Voice at the Baptism and Trans
figuration, 138
"Watch," 285
" We-sections, " 5, 11 ff, 295 f.
Westcott, Bishop, 39 n. , 70 u.,
200 n.
Westcott and Hort, 187 n.
" Western " text, the, 5 f.
Wetstein, 77 n.
Wisdom, Book of, used by St. Paul,
221 n. ; ii. 12-20, pp. 137 f.
Witnesses, the Apostles as, 47
Wolves, metaphor of, 265
Wright, Rev. A., 38 n.
Zahn, Prof., 6, 26
Zeller, 226
Zbckler, Dr., 8 n.

189 n.

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ISAIAH. JEREMIAH. EZEKIEL. DANIEL.
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ST. MATTHEW AND ST. MARK, AND THE GENERAL
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4 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
Biblical History — continued.
BIBLE READINGS SELECTED FROM THE PENTATEUCH
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THE BIBLE FOR HOME READING. Edited, with Comments and
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Part II. Containing Selections from the Wisdom Literature, the
Prophets, and the Psalter, together with extracts from the
Apocrypha. Extra Crown 8vo. 5s. 6d. net.
JEWISH CHRONICLE.—" By this remarkable work Mr. Claude Montefiore has
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Jewish religious thought in England. . . . Though the term 'epoch-making' is often
misapplied, we do not hesitate to apply it on this occasion. We cannot but believe that
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THE OLD TESTAMENT
SCRIPTURE READINGS FOR SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES.
By C. M. Yonge. Globe 8vo. is. 6d. each ; also with comments,

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 5
The Old Testament — continued.
3s. 6d. each. — First Series : Genesis to Deuteronomy. — Second
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Prophets. — Fourth Series : The Gospel Times. — Fifth Series :
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THE DIVINE LIBRARY OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Its
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clearly what has been recently called the * Analytic ' treatment of the books of the Old
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fulfil its purpose of familiarising the minds of earnest Bible readers with the work which
Biblical criticism is now doing."
THE DOCTRINE OF THE PROPHETS. Warburtonian Lectures
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GLASGOW HERALD. — " Professor Kirkpatrick's book will be found of great value
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BOOKMAN. — "As a summary of the main results of recent investigation, and as a
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THE PATRIARCHS AND LAWGIVERS OF THE OLD
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THE PROPHETS AND KINGS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
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THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. An Essay on the
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B

6 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
The Old Testament — continued.
PHILO AND HOLY SCRIPTURE, OR THE QUOTATIONS OF
PHILO FROM THE BOOKS. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
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In the present work the attempt has been made to collect, arrange in
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he has endeavoured to explain Philo's attitude towards Holy Scripture,
and the character of the variations of his text from that of the Septuagint.
TIMES. — " This book will be found by students to be a w -v useful supplement and
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The Pentateuch —
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GOLDEN TREASURY PSALTER. The Student's Edition.
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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 7
THE NEW TESTAMENT
THE AKHMIM FRAGMENT OF THE APOCRYPHAL
GOSPEL OF ST. PETER. By H. B. Swete, D.D. 8vo. 5s. net.
THE PROGRESS OF DOCTRINE IN THE NEW TESTA
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HANDBOOK TO THE TEXTUAL CRITICISM OF NEW
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THE RISE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. By David Saville
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THE MESSAGES OF THE BOOKS. Being Discourses and Notes
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8 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
The New Testament — continued.
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TIMES. — " Will probably become the standard book of reference for those students
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The sequel of an essay by Dr. Chase on the old Syriac element in the
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THE COMMON TRADITION OF THE SYNOPTIC GOSPELS,
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SYNOPTICON : An Exposition of the Common Matter of the Synop
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CAMBRIDGE REVIEW.— "The wonderful force and freshness which we find on
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FOUR LECTURES ON THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE
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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 9
The Gospels — continued.
THE LEADING IDEAS OF THE GOSPELS. By W. Alex
ander, D.D. Oxon., LL.D. Dublin, D.C.L. Oxon., Archbishop of
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BRITISH WEEKLY.— "Really a new book. It sets before the reader with
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several gospels. It is delightful reading. . . . Religious literature does not often
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TWO LECTURES ON THE GOSPELS. By F. Crawford
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Gospel of St. Matthew —
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MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.—" It is sound and helpful, and the brief introduc
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Gospel of St. Mark —
THE GREEK TEXT. With Introduction, Notes, and Indices.
By Rev. H. B. Swete, D.D., Regius Professor of Divinity
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TIMES.— " A learned and scholarly performance, up to date with the most recent
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THE EARLIEST GOSPEL. A Historico-Critical Commentary on
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SCHOOL READINGS IN THE GREEK TESTAMENT.
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10 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
Gospel of St. John — continued.
EXPOSITOR Y TIMES.—" Quite recently we have had an exposition by him whom
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THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN. ByF.D. Maurice. Cr.8vo. 3s. 6d.
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.
ADDRESSES ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. By
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THE OLD SYRIAC ELEMENT IN THE TEXT OF THE
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PROLEGOMENA TO ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES TO THE
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the explanations offered appeal to our sense of what is reasonable."

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE ii
The Epistles of St. Paul — continued.
TIMES.—11 Will be welcomed by all theologians as ( an invaluable contribution to the
study of those Epistles ' as the editor of the volume justly calls it.
DAILY CHIWNICL3. — "The lectures are an important contribution to the study
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ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. A Revised
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The Epistle of St. James —
THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. The Greek Text, with Intro-
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EXPOSITORY TIMES.— "The most complete edition of St. James in the English
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BOOKMA N — " Professor Mayor's volume in every part of it gives proof that no time
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he has exercised the sound judgment of a thoroughly trained scholar and critic. . . .
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notes resemble rather those of Lightfoot than those of Ellicott. ... It is a pleasure to
welcome a book which does credit to English learning, and which will take, and keep, a
foremost place in Biblical literature."
SCOTSMAN. — " It is a work which sums up many others, and to any one who wishes
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EXPOSITOR (Dr. MarcusDods). — " Will IongremainthecommentaryonSt. James,
a storehouse to which all subsequent students of the epistle must be indebted."
The Epistles of St. John —
THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. By F. D. Maurice. Crown
8vo. 3s. 6d.
THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN. The Greek Text, with Notes.
By Right Rev. Bishop Westcott. 4th Edition. 8vo. 12s. 6d.
GUARDIAN. — " It contains a new or rather revised text, with careful critical remarks
and helps ; very copious footnotes on the text ; and after each of the chapters,
longer and more elaborate notes in treatment of leading or difficult questions, whether in
respect of reading or theology. . . . Dr. Westcott has accumulated round them so much
matter that, if not new, was forgotten, or generally unobserved, and has thrown so much
light upon their language, theology, and characteristics. . . . The notes, critical,
illustrative, and exegetical, which are given beneath the text, are extraordinarily full and
careful. . . . They exhibit the same minute analysis or every phrase and word, the same
scrupulous weighing of every inflection and variation that characterised Dr. Westcott's
commentary on the Gospel. . . . There is scarcely a syllable throughout the Epistles
which is dismissed without having undergone the most anxious interrogation."
SA TURD A Y REVIEW. — i( The more we examine this precious volume the more
its exceeding richness in spiritual as well as in literary material grows upon the mind."
The Epistle to the Hebrews —
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS IN GREEK AND
ENGLISH. With Notes. By Rev. F. Rendall. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. English Text, with Com
mentary. By the same. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. With Notes. By Very
Rev. C. J. Vaughan. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
TIMES.—" The name and reputation of the Dean of LlandafT are a better recom
mendation than we can give of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Greek text, with notes ;
an edition which represents the results of more than thirty years' experience in the training
of students for ordination."
THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. The Greek Text, with
Notes and Essays. By Right Rev. Bishop Westcott. 8vo. 14s.
GUARDIAN. — " In form this is a companion volume to that upon the Epistles of St.
John._ The type is excellent, the printing careful, the index thorough ; and the volume
contains a full introduction, followed by the Greek text, with a running commentary, and
a_ number of additional^ notes on verbal and doctrinal points which needed fuller discus
sion. . . . His conception of inspiration is further illustrated by the treatment of the Old
Testament in the Epistle, and the additional notes that bear on this point deserve very
careful study. The spirit in which the student should approach the perplexing questions
of Old Testament criticism could not be better described than it is in the last essay."

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 13
The Book of Revelations —
THE APOCALYPSE. A Study. By the late Archbishop Ben
son. 8vo. 8s. 6d. net.
LECTURES ON THE APOCALYPSE. By Rev. Prof. \V.
Milligan. Crown 8vo. 5s.
DISCUSSIONS ON THE APOCALYPSE. By the same. Cr. 8vo. 5s.
SCOTSMAN. — "These discussions give an interesting and valuable account and
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subject." SCOTTISH GUARDIAN.—" The great merit of the book is the patient and skilful
way in which it has brought the whole discussion down to the present day. . . . The
result is a volume which many will value highly, and which will not, we think, soon be
superseded." LECTURES ON THE REVELATION OF ST. JOHN. By Very
Rev. C. J. Vaughan. 5th Edition. Crown 8vo. 10s. 6d.
THE CHRISTIAN PROPHETS AND THE PROPHETIC
APOCALYPSE. By Edward Carus Selwyn, D.D. Crown
8vo. 6s. net.
THE BIBLE WORD-BOOK. By W. Aldis Wright, Litt.D.,
LL.D. 2nd Edition. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

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GLASGOW HERALD,—" Particularly clear in its exposition, systematic in its dis
position and development, and as light and attractive in style as could reasonably be
expected from the nature of the subject."
Gwatkin (H. M.)^SELECTIONS FROM EARLY WRITERS
Illustrative of Church History to the Time of Constantine. 2nd
Edition. Revised and Enlarged. Cr. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net.
To this edition have been prefixed short accounts of the writers
from whom the passages are selected.
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A HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH DURING THE
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Hort (Dr. F. J. A.)— TWO DISSERTATIONS.. I. On
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14 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
Kruger (Dr. G.)— HISTORY OF EARLY CHRISTIAN
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MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.—" It fully deserves the praise given to it by Pro
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want,' as affording to the intelligent reader who has no time or interest in details, a con
nected general view of the whole vast field of ecclesiastical history."
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OF THE FIRST DAYS. The Church of Jerusalem. The
Church of the Gentiles. The Church of the World.
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Zhe Cburcb of Englano
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A HANDBOOK ON WELSH CHURCH DEFENCE. By the
Bishop of St. Asaph. 3rd Edition. Fcap. 8vo. Sewed, 6d.

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 15
Dissent in its Relation to —
DISSENT IN ITS RELATION TO THE CHURCH OF ENG
LAND. By Rev. G. H. Curteis. Bampton Lectures for 187 1.
Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.
History of —
HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. Edited by
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Vol. I. HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
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Vol. II. THE ENGLISH CHURCH FROM THE NOR
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Vol. III. THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE FOUR
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Vol. IV. THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN THE SIX
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Ifi Pfe'bCL'i'CLtzo'i'i
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Holy Communion —
THE COMMUNION SERVICE FROM THE BOOK OF
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FIRST COMMUNION, with Prayers and Devotions for the newly
Confirmed. By Rev. Canon Maclear. 32010. 6d.

16 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
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tested them, we must pronounce very good. . . . We may add that we know already
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GLASGOW HERALD.— " A valuable addition to the well-known series of Theo
logical Manuals published by Messrs. Macmillan."
CHURCH TIMES. — "Those who are in any way responsible for the training of
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with the assistance of his colleague, Mr. Williams, has just published."
NEW HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER.
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Historical and Biographical —
THE ECCLESIASTICAL EXPANSION OF ENGLAND IN
THE GROWTH OF THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION.
Hulsean Lectures, 1894-95. BY Alfred Barry, D.D., D.C.L.,
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Crown 8vo. 6s.
The author's preface says : " The one object of these lectures — delivered
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tion to that awakening of interest in the extraordinary religious mission of
England which seems happily characteristic of the present time. "

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 17
Historical and Biographical — continued.
DAIL Y NEWS. — " These lectures are particularly interesting as containing the case
for the Christian missions at a time when there is a disposition to attack them in some
quarlers." LIVES OF THE ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY. From
St. Augustine to Juxon. By the Very Rev. Walter Farquhar
Hook, D.D., Dean of Chichester. Demy 8vo. The volumes sold
separately as follows: — Vol. I., 15s. ; Vol. II., 15s. ; Vol. V.,
15s. ; Vols. VI. and VII., 30s. ; Vol. VIII., 15s. ; Vol. X.,
15s. ; Vol. XL, 15s. ; Vol. XII., 15s.
ATHENAEUM. — "The most impartial, the most instructive, and the most interest
ing of histories."
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF THE VERY REV. WALTER
FARQUHAR HOOK, D.D. By the Very Rev. W. R. W.
Stephens, F.S. A., Dean of Winchester. Crown 8vo. 7th Edi
tion. With Portrait. 6s.
LIKE AND LETTERS OF ARCHBISHOP BENSON. By his
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Abridged Edition. In one Vol. 8s. 6d. net.
LIFE AND LETTERS OF AMBROSE PHILLIPPS DE LISLE.
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THE OXFORD MOVEMENT. Twelve Years, 1833-45. By
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THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF R. W. CHURCH, late Dean
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JAMES FRASER, Second Bishop of Manchester. A Memoir.
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LIFE AND LETTERS OF FENTON JOHN ANTHONY
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reveal to us a man the very antipodes of a dry-as-dust pedant, a man with many interests
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THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE. Chiefly
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MEMORIALS (PART I.) FAMILY AND PERSONAL, 1766-
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18 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
Historical and Biographical — continued.
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IN THE COURT OF THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTER
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Cornish (J. F.)— WEEK BY WEEK/ Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d.
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Kingsley. Extra fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d.

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 19
Kingsley (Charles) — continued.
DAILY THOUGHTS. Selected from the Writings of Charles
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FROM DEATH TO LIFE. Fragments of Teaching to a Village
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Zbe jfatbers

INDEX OF NOTEWORTHY WORDS AND PHRASES FOUND
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20 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
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brief, lucid, and thoroughly explanatory of the historical and critical questions related to
the texts. The introduction to the Didache, and the translation of the ' Church Manual
of Early Christianity,' are peculiarly interesting, as giving at once an admirable version
of it, and# the opinion of the first of English biblical critics on the latest discovery in
patristic literature."
1b\>mnoIogi?
Bernard (T. D.)— THE SONGS OF THE HOLY NATIVITY.
Being Studies of the Benedictus, Magnificat, Gloria in Excelsis,
and Nunc Dimittis. Crown Svo. 5s.
Brooke (S. A.)— CHRISTIAN HYMNS. Edited and arranged.
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Selborne (Roundell, Earl of) —
THE BOOK OF PRAISE. From the best English Hymn Writers.
Pott 8vo. 2s. 6d. net.
A HYMNAL. Chiefly from The Book of Praise. In various sizes.
B. Pott 8vo, larger type. is. — C. Same Edition, fine paper, is. 6d. —
An Edition with Music, Selected, Harmonised, and Composed by
John Hullah. Pott 8vo. 3s. 6d.
Woods (M. A.) — HYMNS FOR SCHOOL WORSHIP.
Compiled by M. A. Woods. Pott Svo. is. 6d.
IReliQious {Teaching
Bell (Rev. G. C)— RELIGIOUS TEACHING IN SECOND
ARY SCHOOLS. For Teachers and Parents. Suggestions as

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 21
to Lessons on the Bible, Early Church History, Christian Evidences,
etc. By the Rev. G. C. Bell, M.A., Master of Marlborough
College. 2nd Edition. With new- chapter on Christian Ethic.
Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
GUARDIAN. — " The hints and suggestions given are admirable, and, as far as Bible
teaching or instruction in ' Christian Evidences ' is concerned, leave nothing to be desired.
Much time and thought has evidently been devoted by the writer to the difficulties which
confront the teacher of the Old Testament, and a large portion of the volume is taken up
with the consideration of this branch of his subject."
¦ EDUCATIONAL REVIEW.— "For those teachers who are dissatisfied with the
existing state of things, and who are striving after something better, this little handbook
is invaluable. Its aim is ' to map out a course of instruction on practical lines, and to
suggest methods and books which may point the way to a higher standpoint and a wider
horizon.' For the carrying out of this, and also for his criticism of prevailing methods,
all teachers owe Mr. Bell a debt of gratitude ; and if any are roused to a due sense of
their responsibility in this matter, he will feel that his book has not been written in vain."
Gilbert (Dr. G. H.)— A PRIMER OF THE CHRISTIAN
RELIGION. Based on the Teaching of Jesus, its Founder and
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Palmer (Florence U.)— ONE YEAR OF SUNDAY SCHOOL
LESSONS FOR YOUNG CHILDREN. Adapted for use in
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Sermons, Xectures, Hboresees, anb
Gbeolc-Qical j£ssa\>s
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Abbey (Rev. C. J.)— THE DIVINE LOVE: ITS STERN
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CAMBRIDGE SERMONS. 8vo. 6s.
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_ GLASGOW HERALD.— " Bolh from the homiletic and what may be called the
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22 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
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ARCHBISHOP BENSON IN IRELAND. A record of his Irish
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PALL MALL GAZETTE. — "No words of mine could appreciate, or do justice
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Bernard (Canon).— THE SONGS OF THE HOLY NATIV
ITY CONSIDERED (1) AS RECORDED IN SCRIPTURE.
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To use the words of its author, this book is offered " to readers of
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GLASGOW HERALD. — " He conveys much useful information in a scholarly way."
SCOTSMAN. — " Their meaning and their relationships, the reasons why the Church
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Brooke (Rev. Stopford A.)— SHORT SERMONS. Cr. 8vo. 6s.

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 23
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NEW STARTS IN LIFE, AND OTHER SERMONS. Crown
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WESTMINSTER GAZETTE.- ¦" All characterised by that fervent piety, catho
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THE RELATIONS BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
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24 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
Canterbury (Frederick, Archbishop of) — continued.
CHARGE DELIVERED AT HIS FIRST VISITATION. 8vo.
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the preacher and his age, and with the aim of the preacher. In each case he is practical,
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SOME THOUGHTS ON CHRISTIAN REUNION. Being a
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ADVENT SERMONS. 1885. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d.
VILLAGE SERMONS. Crown 8vo. 6s.
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TIMES. — " In these sermons we see how a singularly gifted and cultivated mind was
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be supposed to have little in common. . . His village sermons are not the by-work, if
one whose interests were elsewhere in higher matters. They are the outcome of his
deepest interests and of the life of his choice. . . . These sermons are worth perusal of
only to show what preaching, even to the humble and unlearned hearers, may be made
in really competent hands."

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 25
Church (Dean) — continued.
CATHEDRAL AND UNIVERSITY SERMONS. Crown 8vo. 6s.
PASCAL AND OTHER SERMONS. Crown 8vo. 6s.
TIMES. — "They are all eminently characteristic of one of the most saintly of modern
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SPECTATOR. — "Dean Church's seem to us the finest sermons published since
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sermons of a good scholar, a great thinker, and a firm and serene Christian."
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ORDER AND GROWTH AS INVOLVED IN THE SPIRITUAL
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26 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
Davies (Rev. J. Llewelyn) — continued.
GLASGOW HERALD. — "This is a wise and suggestive book, touching upon man^
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ABERDEEN DAILY FREE PRESS.—" An able discussion of the true basis and
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English Theological Library. Edited by Rev. Frederic
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IV. THE WORKS OF BISHOP BUTLER. Vol. I. Sermons,
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7s. 6d. net each.
THE PILOT.— " One could hardly desire a better working edition than this which
Dr. Bernard has given us. . . . Sure to become the standard edition for students."
THE SPECTATOR.— " An excellent piece of work."

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 27
English Theological Library — continued.
V. THE CONFERENCE BETWEEN WILLIAM LAUD AND
MR. FISHER, THE JESUIT. Edited by Rev. C. H. Simp-
KINSON, M.A. Author of The Life of Archbishop Laud. [8s. 6d. net.
[Other volumes are in preparation.}
EVIL AND EVOLUTION. An attempt to turn the Light of Modern
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EXPOSITORY TIMES.— "The book is well worth the interest it is almost certain
to excite."
CHURCH TIMES. — "There can be no question about the courage or the keen
logic and the lucid style of this fascinating treatment of a problem which is of pathetic
interest to all of us. . . . It deserves to be studied by all, and no one who reads it can
fail to be struck by it."
FAITH AND CONDUCT : An Essay on Verifiable Religion. Crown
8vo. 7s. 6d.
Farrar (Very Rev. F. W., Dean of Canterbury) —
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Collected Edition of the Sermons, etc. Cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d. each.
SEEKERS AFTER GOD.
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THE SILENCE AND VOICES OF GOD.
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SAINTLY WORKERS. Five Lenten Lectures.
EPHPHATHA : or, The Amelioration of the World.
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LIFE EVERLASTING. Globe 8vo. 3s. 6d.
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IN A PLAIN PATH. Addresses to EoyS. Globe 8vo. 3s. 6d.
SPEAKER.—" He handles with admirable vigour, and real discernment of a boy's
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Fraser (Bishop). — UNIVERSITY SERMONS. Edited by
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28 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
Furse (Archdeacon).— A NATIONAL CHURCH. 8vo. 6d.
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Hort (F. J. A.)— THE WAY, THE TRUTH, THE LIFE.
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CAMBRIDGE REVIEW.— " Only to few is it given to scan the wide fields of truth
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Hort possessed this power is shown by the Hulsean Lectures just published. They carry
us in the most wonderful way to the very centre of the Christian system ; no aspect of
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JUDAISTIC CHRISTIANITY. Crown 8vo. 6s.
SCOTSMAN.— "The great merit of Dr. Hort's lectures is that succinctly and yet
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GLASGOW HERALD.— i' Will receive a respectful welcome at the hands of all
biblical scholars. . . ._ A model of exact and patient scholarship, controlled by robust
English sagacity, and it is safe to say that it will take a high place in the literature of the
subject." VILLAGE SERMONS. Crown 8yo. 6s.
Selected from the Sermons preached by Professor Hort to his
village congregation at St. Ippolyt's, and including a series of
Sermons dealing in a broad and suggestive way with the successive
books of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations.

THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 29
Hort (F. J. A.) — continued.
SERMONS ON THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE (selected from
Village Sermons). Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
VILLAGE SERMONS IN OUTLINE. Crown 8vo. 6s.
CONTENTS : I. The Prayer Book, 16 Sermons. II. Baptism,
J Sermons. III. Mutual Subjection the Rule of Life (Eph. v. 21),
6 Sermons. IV. The Sermon on the Mount (St. Matt. v. 1 ; vii.
29), 1 1 Sermons. V. Advent, 4 Sermons. VI. The Armour of
the Cross. VII. The Resurrection, 7 Sermons.
CAMBRIDGE AND OTHER SERMONS. Crown 8vo. 6s.
Hughes (T.)— THE MANLINESS OF CHRIST. 2nd Ed.
Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d.
GLOBE. — " The Manliness of Christ is a species of lay sermon such as Judge Hughes
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prevailing characteristic of all his literary products."
BRITISH WEEKL Y.—" A new edition of a strong book."
Hutton (R. H.)—
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THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. Globe 8vo. 5s.
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Dr. Hyde thus describes the object of his book : " This little book aims
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PRACTICAL IDEALISM. Globe 8vo. 5s. net.
Illingworth (Rev. J. R.)— SERMONS PREACHED IN A
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PERSONALITY, DIVINE AND HUMAN. Bampton Lectures,
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TIMES. — " Will take high rank among the rare theological masterpieces produced by
that celebrated foundation."
EXPOSITOR. — " It is difficult to convey an adequate impression of the^ freshness
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reading once ; it is to be studied."
DIVINE IMMANENCE. An Essay on the Spiritual Significance
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CHURCH QUARTERLY REVIEW— ¦" A very valuable book. . . . Divine
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remarkable extent, profound thought and clear expression. It is -throughout written
in an interesting style. "
GUARDIAN. — "Altogether, we have rarely read a book of such philosophical
earnestness in construing the Christian view of existence in terms of the thought and
knowledge of these days, nor one more likely to bring home the knowledge of a Saviour
to the modern man."

30 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
Jacob (Rev. J. A.) — BUILDING IN SILENCE, and other
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James (Rev. Herbert).— THE COUNTRY CLERGYMAN
AND HIS WORK. Crown 8vo. 6s.
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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 31
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Medley (Rev. W.)— CHRIST THE TRUTH. Being the
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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 33
Milligan (Rev. Prof. W.)— THE RESURRECTION OF OUR
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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 35
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36 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 37
SCOTSMAN. — " They form an altogether admirable collection of vigorous and
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38 MACMILLAN AND CO.'S
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THEOLOGICAL CATALOGUE 39
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Wood (C.J.)— SURVIVALS IN CHRISTIANITY. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.— "Striking, stimulating and suggestive lectures.
. . . The author writes with the boldness and conviction of a mystic ; he brings wide
reading to bear upon every branch of his subject, and his book is impressive and
interesting throughout."

Printed by R. & R. Clakk, Limited, Edinburgh.
c. 5. 5.02.