We shall not be surprised, therefore, to observe that the author in his description of this Book has really told us that it does not bring the whole work to a conclusion. For in its opening verse he does not (as our English version misrepresents him) speak of the Former Book, but rather of the First Book of his treatise as already in the hands of his patron. And there seems no reason why this language may not be supposed to be employed with precision. The hints in this Preface appear, moreover, to hold out a broader promise than the Book meets, and lead us to look for a Third Book, in which there should be recorded the rest of what Jesus continued to do and to teach through His servants after He was received up, until witness had been borne Him ‘unto the uttermost part of the earth.’ We need not speculate upon the probable contents of this projected Third Book. It is enough, meanwhile, to be assured that it was contemplated, and that our Acts cannot be looked upon as a complete treatise, even upon Apostolic history, but is only the middle section of a great historical work, never fully completed, which was to contain the history of the beginnings of Christianity, with a view especially to exhibiting its Divine origin and mission, and its Divine fitting for the great work committed to it.

Point of View of Acts. Only a particular portion of this comprehensive programme is included in the section of the work contained in its Second Book. Speaking sub specie temporis, we may perhaps say that the First Book—our Gospel of Luke—is devoted to the preparation for the Church of Christ; the Second Book—our Book of Acts—to the establishment of the Church in the Roman Empire, with its centre in the capital city; while the Third Book, perhaps, was to exhibit the equipment of the Church for its great function in the world. The author, however, does not himself look at the matter sub specie temporis. The whole development is conceived by him sub specie aeternitatis. Accordingly, he puts it thus (Act i. 1). The First Book treats of all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day in which He was taken up. The two subsequent Books were to treat of all that Jesus continued to do and to teach after His ascension. To him, thus, the second section was the ‘Acts of the Apostles’ only in so far as the Apostles were conceived as the instruments through which Jesus prosecuted His work of establishing His Church in the world. It was specifically the Acts of the Risen Christ. It therefore begins with an account of the forty days which Jesus spent with His disciples after His resurrection, and of the Ascension itself which brought them to a close by His session on the throne of His power. This whole account was purposely held over from the Gospel, and is here set forth in a manner that throws into relief the relation of the events recorded rather to what was yet to come than to what was already past. For the same reason the baptism of the Holy Spirit is particularly dwelt upon, and the narrative hastens on to the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost, when ‘the promise of the Father’ came and the nascent Church was endowed for its work with a supernatural power, or rather with a supernatural agent. At every step in the progress of the history, moreover, explicit stress is laid upon its Divine direction, so that not only is there continual reference to the intervention of God, but the whole course of the history is represented as determined by Divine leading. It has been sometimes imagined that the miraculous element might be sifted out from Acts and a residuum for a natural history of the origins of Christianity left. Nothing could be more impossible. Not merely are the miracles recorded inseparably interwoven with the narrative, so that the whole must be taken or the whole left, but the whole history is conceived from a supernatural point of view, and developed as a distinctively supernatural product. To the author of this Book Christianity was not established as the Roman empire by Divinely-aided men; it was established by the Lord Jesus Himself, ordering all things according to His will and using men as instruments in the developing of His plans.

The Programme of the Work is appropriately, therefore, drawn from a heavenly source, and seeks to present the history as the sheer unfolding of the announced purpose of the risen Lord. Something like the formal enunciation of its theme is given in Luke xxiv. 47, our Lord’s prophetic announcement that, after ‘the promise of the Father’ had been received by His followers, repentance and remission of sins were to be preached in His name ‘unto all the nations, beginning with Jerusalem’; and even more specifically in Acts i. 8, where the promise is that His followers should receive power when the Holy Ghost had come upon them, and should be His witnesses, ‘both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.’ It is much in the manner of this author to prepare the way for his detailed treatment by anticipatory communications of this sort; and there is every reason to suspect that by his prominent record of these predictions he wished to forecast the outline of the narrative upon which he was about to enter. The actual contents of the Book as it lies before us encourage this suspicion. The reception of power by the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the disciples is duly recorded in Acts ii. 1-13; and their witness-bearing is described first in Jerusalem (Acts ii. 14-viii. 1), then in all Judea and Samaria (Acts viii. 1-xii. 28), and even ‘unto the uttermost part of the earth’ (Acts xiii. 1-xxviii. 31). The last of these topics is not exhausted, to be sure, in this Book, although in Paul’s journey to Rome and unhindered preaching there, and the consequent establishment of Christianity in the metropolis of the human race, an earnest of its accomplishment seems to be plainly exhibited. The fuller account of its accomplishment was doubtless, however, left to the Third Book, in which only should the history reach its completeness in an account of how ‘the waves of Christ’s will rolled onward’ in fulfilment of His prophetic outline.

The Disposition of the Book is sufficiently clear to be commonly very correctly apprehended. It falls naturally into three parts, the narrative revolving in turn about Jerusalem, Antioch and Rome, as the opening, middle and end points in the development of the history. The narrative thus advances in ever-widening circles. The circle swept from Rome as a centre is left, indeed, for the Third Book, the narrative of the Second Book closing with the attainment of this new centre. Within its limits the whole progress of the movement is unfolded up to the establishment of the Church in its third centre of development—which was at the same time the centre of the world. It gives us, then, not so much the history of the spread of the Church, nor even the history of the spread of the Church in the Roman Empire, nor even along the Mediterranean littoral,—much that would necessarily enter into such a history is omitted; it gives us the history of the progressive establishment of three great centres of Church development at Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome. We have first explained the process by which the Church was firmly established at Jerusalem (i. 1-viii. 1). Then the radiation of the Church from Jerusalem is described, working up to the firm establishment of a new centre for its activities at Antioch (iii. 1-xii. 25). Lastly, the missionary circuits from Antioch as a centre are described, culminating in the establishment of a new centre at Rome (xiii. 1-xxviii. 31). In each instance the task set before himself by the author seems to be to trace out the factors that co-operated to secure for the Church a sure footing in these three great centres in turn. His narrative thus advances, in something like a spiral movement, steadily upwards towards its goal.

The Chronology of the Narrative. In filling out this outline the author fulfils his promise of an orderly narrative. His order of narration is not always, to be sure, chronological. He permits himself, for example, freely to illustrate a period by parallel instances (e.g., chaps. viii.-xi.); and he uses the method of general statement to be followed by particular instances. Yet he is careful of chronological sequence, and writes out of clear apprehension of the actual line of development. Very few points of contact occur with the course of events in secular history, from which an absolute chronology for the narrative may be calculated. The whole action of the Book is included between the ascension of our Lord and the release of Paul from his (first) Roman imprisonment; and these two events may be dated with some confidence A.D. 30 and 63 respectively. The time actually covered by the story, therefore, is just that thirty-three years which we conventionally ascribe to a generation, and corresponds as nearly as possible with the time covered by the First Book of this history—the life of Jesus having extended to about thirty-three years. Just at the close of the second period of the history as here depicted, when the establishment of a new Church centre at Antioch had been accomplished and the series of events was about to begin which ended in the shifting of the centre finally to Rome (Acts xii.), there is introduced an account of the death of Herod Agrippa I., which fell in A.D. 44. Between A.D. 30 and A.D. 44, therefore, the action of the first twelve chapters is to be distributed. Of more importance in determining the chronology would be the accession of Festus to the procuratorship of Judea, which is mentioned towards the close of the book (xxv. 1), if we could only be sure of the date of that event. On the whole, A.D. 60 seems its most probable date. From this point we can work back by the aid of fairly continuous notices of time-intervals to the council of Acts xv., and for the period before that we receive aid from certain hints in the epistle to the Galatians (i. 18, ii. 1). Other allusions to events of secular history, such as the dominion of Aretas over Damascus (ix. 25), the great famine (xi. 28), the edict of Claudius expelling the Jews from Rome (xviii. 12), the procuratorship of Gallio in Achaia (xviii. 12), supply only a series of general checks. We cannot go far wrong in establishing the following chronological scheme:—the Ascension of Christ, Acts i., A.D. 30; the conversion of Paul, Acts ix., A.D. 34-35; Paul’s (second) visit to Jerusalem, Acts xii., A.D. 44-45; Paul’s first missionary journey, Acts xiii.-xiv., A.D. 47-48; the council at Jerusalem, Acts xv., A.D. 50-51; Paul’s second missionary journey, Acts xv. 40-xviii. 22, A.D. 51-53; Paul’s so-called third missionary journey, Acts xviii. 23, A.D. 54-58; Paul’s arrest, Acts xxi. 27 seq., A.D. 58; the accession of Festus, Acts xxiv. 27, A.D. 60; Paul’s arrival at Rome, Acts xxviii. 16, A.D. 61; end of Paul’s imprisonment, Acts xxviii. 30, A.D. 63.

The ‘Tendency’ of the Book. Even a cursory survey of the plan and contents of the Book is enough to assure us that it is no dry and colourless chronicle. ‘It is quite plain that a very careful selection of facts for record has been made, and only those made use of that fell in with the purpose the author had in view. If this is what is intended by ascribing ‘tendency’ to a book, this Book is undoubtedly a ‘tendential’ writing, as is, from the very necessity of the case, every historical work whose author rises above the mechanical cataloguing of events and seeks to understand them and to convey their significance to his readers. Certainly the author of Acts exhibits an exceptionally clear conception of the drift of the history he is narrating, and marshals his materials with notable skill with a view to conveying this conception to his readers. The Book is, in a word, a historical treatise of the first rank, whose view of the progress and meaning of the section of history it records is well worth inquiring into.

The main traits of this conception are too clearly conveyed to be easily missed, and have already been cursorily suggested. In the history he was recording this author saw above everything else, the continued activity of the Lord Jesus Christ in establishing His church in the Roman empire. Nothing is more characteristic of his presentation of it than his supernaturalism. It is primarily this that gives unity to his view of its course and colour to his handling of its details. The whole history is unfolded as the evolution of the Divine plan under the immediate direction of the Divine hand. Closely connected with this pervasive supernaturalism is the universalism of the narrative. The Divine plan of which the history is treated as the unfolding is announced at the outset (Luke xxiv. 47; Acts i. 8) as involving a distinct universalism; and the writer makes it his business to trace the steps by which this universalism was realised, and to exhibit its implication in every stage of the history. This involves a theological attitude; for the universalism of the Gospel depends on a special conception of the plan of salvation. An attachment to the Pauline doctrine of Justification is accordingly everywhere impressed upon the fabric of the narrative.

Three Further Traits of the Author’s Conception of the history stand in close relation to this fundamental design.

The most important of these is what has been miscalled a conciliatory tendency. He undoubtedly conceived the history as having developed in a right line, and the final universal outcome as having lain implicitly in the nature of things from the beginning. It belonged to the very nature of an attempt to exhibit the orderly development that the implicit universalism of the early stages and the early teachers should be thrown out into view. The inevitable effect is to produce a superficial appearance of an attempt to harmonise conflicting elements.

A similar origin is traceable for what has sometimes been spoken of as an apologetical tendency. Such a tendency is so far real that the narrative is undoubtedly directed to supply a historical account, and therefore justification, of the course of development taken by the Church under the leading of Paul.

To the author Paul is unquestionably the great hero of the early Church; the Church of Christ is to him essentially the Church as it was given shape and character by Paul’s teaching. The Pauline Church in the Roman empire is the consummation whose Divine formation he has undertaken historically to exhibit. Of course it falls within his plan to justify the steps by which this consummation was attained as the divinely led explication of what was implicit in the Church from the beginning. This naturally gives to this history the appearance of an apology for Gentile Christianity—for the Christianity of Paul. But, naturally, he conceives himself as exhibiting this as inherent in the facts, not as imposing it on the facts.

Somewhat more remotely is what has been called the political tendency of the Book the outgrowth of its fundamental standpoint. It was not from the empire that the Church was at first in danger. A certain sympathy existed between the universalism of Rome and the universalism of Christianity by which they were constituted, in a sort, natural allies. A sense of this seems impressed on the narrative. Some stress appears to be laid on the fact that the Church had spread through the empire without coming into serious conflict with it. Thus the Church was exhibited not as a provincial but as a world phenomenon; the Gospel was for all creation under heaven.

The Strong Artistic Instinct of the author has also left its impress on his work. By it has been, no doubt, conditioned both his selection and his use of his materials. It is clearly at work, for example, in the choice of the incidents by which in the opening chapters a vivid picture is conveyed of the formation and maturing of the mother Church, as a model Church, in the Holy City. This is accomplished by an artistically-arranged alternating series of disturbances from without and trials from within, by which the infant Church was purified and hardened (chaps. iii.-vii.). It is at work again in the parallel that is traced to a certain very obvious extent, but by no means throughout, in the experiences of Peter and Paul, suggestive somewhat of the art of Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. It is particularly visible, however, in the multitude of graphic details that are introduced, in the incorporation of the speeches delivered by the actors, and in numerous vigorous touches enlivening the whole narrative. There lies in these graphic touches, moreover, a hint of the intense personal interest with which the author prosecuted his task, and he sometimes seems, indeed, to insert details or linger over incidents chiefly because of his own lively interest in them. From a strictly æsthetic point of view this may constitute a flaw, but it adds a charming naturalness to the narrative, and gives the reader increased confidence in it as a narrative coming obviously from the heart of its writer.

As a Historical Document the Book of Acts deserves as high an appreciation as it attracts to itself as a piece of literary composition. It evinces itself by every test we can apply to be a remarkably accurate transcript of the facts with which it deals, and a thoroughly trustworthy account of the course of the events which it portrays. The geographical, historical and topographical tests for which its subject-matter affords opportunity are exceptionally numerous and varied. The result of their application is to exhibit what must be called a wonderful exactitude both of formal statement and incidental allusion. The narrative carries us into the intimate life of a multitude of communities throughout the whole East—Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and then to Rome. The conditions were very complicated: the circumstances of the time very changeable: but the narrative moves among them all with firm and sure step. Geographical, topographical, political, social details swarm in its pages. The author touches them all with an exact hand. The personages he introduces act thoroughly in character, and when known from other sources are recognisably themselves in his pages. The speeches he reports reproduce not only the characteristic ideas of their authors, but their very diction and linguistic peculiarities. James, Peter, Paul speak here with the same accents with which we are made familiar by their extant epistles. This is the more remarkable as there is no trace of the use of these epistles. So far as this narrative is concerned, we should not know that a single one of them was in existence. Nevertheless, so far are they from being excluded by the narrative, that a comparison of their incidental allusions to events with it reveals a mass of ‘undesigned coincidences,’ which afford a fresh basis of confidence in its trustworthiness. In short, the ability of Acts as a literary composition is fairly matched by its value as a record of facts. Its claim to recognition as a history of the first rank is rooted no more firmly in its clear conception of its task and firm and artistic handling of its material than in its evident possession and faithful use of excellent first-hand sources of information.

The Sources of Information at the author’s command are suggested to us in the first instance by the circumstance that certain passages occur in the course of the narrative which are couched in the first person, as if their author were also an actor in the scenes described. These so-called ‘we-passages’ embrace sections in the narrative of Paul’s second and so-called third missionary circuits, including the final journey to Jerusalem and to Rome (xvi. 10-17, xx. 5-15, xxi. 1-18, xxvii. 1-xxviii. 16). Their contents fully bear out the natural implication of the first personal pronoun. They are obviously descriptions of personal experiences written with all the vividness and detailed exactness natural to such descriptions. In these sections at least, therefore, we have autoptic testimony. But here another fact of the first importance imposes itself upon our recognition. These ‘we-passages’ contain cross-references to other parts of the narrative, and in manner, diction, peculiarities of style and language are of a piece with the rest of the Book and with the Gospel of Luke. It is, in a word, unreasonable to doubt that the author of the ‘we-passages’ is the author of the entire work. It is therefore the author of the Book himself who comes forward in these ‘we-passages’ as a companion of Paul, marking by the change of person his presence at or absence from the transactions described. All the phenomena support this certainly eminently reasonable supposition.

With the recognition of this fact, however, the problem of the sources of the history takes on a new face. For a considerable portion of the work of Paul the author was himself an eye-witness. For the remainder of the work of that Apostle his long and intimate association with Paul and with others of Paul’s companions supplied him with the best conceivable means of information. We learn further that the author of the ‘we-passages,’ who is the author also of the whole book, accompanied Paul on his last visit to Jerusalem; abode in his company ‘many days’ in the house of Philip at Cæsarea; lodged with him with one of the ‘primitive disciples,’ named Mnason, on the road to Jerusalem; was taken by Paul ‘to James’ and made known to ‘all the elders’ of the Church in the mother city of Christianity; and apparently abode with Paul in the cradle region of Christianity throughout the whole two years that yet intervened before he started for Rome. Nor must we forget the opportunities he must have enjoyed throughout his companionship with Paul for association with others—such as John Mark—who were intimately acquainted with the history of the Church from the beginning. He had every opportunity, in short, to collect from the actors themselves authentic information as to the origins of the Christian Church.

The Book of Acts comes to us, therefore, from the hand of one whom we know to have been in long and intimate contact with the primary sources of information for the matters with which it deals, and who professes to have made it his business to ‘trace the course of all things accurately from the first.’ It is history at first hand. This is oddly illustrated by a fact otherwise puzzling—the fact, to wit, already incidentally alluded to, that the epistles of Paul, for example, are not put under contribution as a source for the history. Only a writer possessed of even more immediate sources of information could have ventured to neglect Paul’s own letters in drawing up an account of his work in founding the churches. No late writer could have neglected them and failed to come into conflict with the data embedded in them. A phenomenon, seemingly strange in itself, receives thus its adequate explanation so soon as the real circumstances are apprehended. Paul’s letters are not put under contribution by this author for the very sufficient reason that they were not needed by him. He comes forward as a co-witness with Paul’s letters of the life and labours of the Apostle, not as dependent on them for his knowledge. We do not quote the letters of other members of our household in describing the life we have shared.

The Author. Who the companion of Paul was who wrote Acts we could scarcely learn from the Book itself. The unanimous voice of early tradition identifies him with ‘the beloved physician, Luke,’ of whom the Apostle speaks in his later epistles as a specially-trusted fellow-labourer (Col. iv. 14; Phil. 24; 2 Tim. iv. 11). To this must be added the weight of the equally consistent tradition that its companion Book, the Gospel of Luke, came from Luke’s hand. The very obscurity of Luke increases the credibility of the tradition. Pure invention might well have selected an Apostle or ‘some great one’ to whom to attribute so substantial a portion of the New Testament. But it would hardly have singled out a person who would have been unknown, even by name, save for passing allusions in the closing words of two or three epistles. Further weight is added to it by the thorough fitting in of the allusions to Luke in these epistles with the implications of the ‘we-passages’—which cannot be said of either Timothy or Silas or Titus, to whom speculation has pointed as alternative possibilities. Let us add that the diction of the Book is redolent with phraseology in vogue among Greek medical writers, and that this lends a probability that its author was the ‘beloved physician, Luke.’ No inherent considerations break the force of the historical attestation, therefore, and we may readily rest in it. The matter is not of the first significance, but a natural interest attaches to singling out the very person to whom we owe such an important portion of the New Testament.

The Date when the Book was written ceases to be a matter of great importance on the identification of its author with a companion of Paul who had enjoyed exceptional advantages for informing himself of the early history of Christianity. No matter when he actually worked his collectanea into this highly-organised treatise, it is first-hand information he is giving us. Nevertheless, it is not an idle question when the book was written. Certain difficulties in understanding it—as, for example, its relation to Paul’s epistles—seem to be increased by carrying it down to a late date. There is little in the Book, however, to fix its date with exactness. It contains no allusion to any event whatever which occurred later than those embraced in its narrative. Its abrupt close, with a bare reference to Paul’s two years’ preaching in Rome, does not imply that it was written at this point of time, but only refers us to the next Book for a continuation of the narrative. The ‘we-passages’ are so full of details of an inherently unimportant kind as to suggest that they may be excerpts from a journal, and so that the book was composed at a relatively late date; but, on the other hand, the tendency of the author to permit the keenness of his own personal interest to affect his dealing with his materials may fully account for the fulness of the details in passages describing experiences in which he shared. If the record in the Gospel of Luke of our Lord’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem were really so phrased as to imply that the event had already taken place when it was written, this Second Book of the treatise of which the Gospel constitutes the First Book, could scarcely have been written before, say, A.D. 80. But the interpretation thus put on the passage is certainly somewhat strained, and might be almost equally easily applied to Matthew’s record, or indeed even to Daniel’s original prophecy. On the other hand, a reference to Luke’s Gospel can scarcely be eliminated without resort to artificial interpretation from I Tim. v. 18; and this would imply that that gospel was written prior to the date of that epistle, that is to say before A.D. 67 or 68. This does not seem too early a date to assign to Acts, which would naturally follow the Gospel at no great interval.

The Literary Manner, Style, and Diction of the Book increase in interest, on the other hand, on the identification of its author. They correspond rather remarkably with what might have been expected of Luke. Mention has already been made of the flavour of medical phraseology which pervades its language. It is scarcely likely that anyone but a physician would have written just as this book is written. It is just as clearly the production of a Greek and of an educated gentleman. The Greek instinct for the sea is continually in evidence. It is clearly a landsman that is writing, but a landsman habituated to think of human intercourse in the terms of a seafaring people. He is careful to mention the ports of the towns he visited. The management of a ship, the incidents of a voyage, the behaviour of a vessel in the sea, on the other hand, are described after a fashion which suggests one dependent on what he heard about him for his terms and modes of expression. The ease with which he takes up the language of sailors is perhaps a hint of the versatile talent of his race. There is certainly apparent throughout the book what we may perhaps call a remarkable transparency of diction: the traits of the particular sources drawn upon continually shine through the language. Great variety of tint is thus communicated to the narrative, despite its essential unity of style. The contrast thus induced between the opening and closing chapters is very marked, corresponding to the passage from the Hebrew beginning to the Hellenistic end of the history. There is no calculated artifice in this. It is the natural result of the sensitiveness of the author’s feeling for language, under the influence of which his speech insensibly takes on the tone of the sources underlying his work. Were the Book written in the formal language of the schools, no doubt the influence of the ever-varying sources upon its diction would have been less marked. But this is far from the case. Of the fashionable rhetorical devices of the day it exhibits no trace. It is written throughout rather in the simple language of educated conversation, and shows all the flexibility of that most versatile of vehicles.

The most fundamental trait of the literary method of the Book is its reliance on a mere presentation of the hard facts. This may be in part due to the author’s mental habits as an educated physician. He appears to feel that if the facts are duly and clearly set down in their proper relations they may be safely left to tell their own story. He seldom pauses for reflections, or to point out the working of causes, or the nexus of causes and effects. Few books, even among historical treatises, are so compact of the bare facts. It is a great testimony to Luke’s genius that he has been able by this method to produce not a chronicle, or a body of collections, but a vivid, vital, vitalising treatise, conveying with lucidity and force the conception of the historical development which he had formed. The essentials of high dramatic talent are latent in such a performance.

Its Religious Character and Authority. The value of the Book of Acts is not exhausted when its excellence as literature and its importance as history are noted. It commands our admiration as literature. To the historian it is precious as preserving the most trustworthy and vivid picture that has come down to us of the social life of the Eastern Provinces of the middle of the first century. To the sacred historian it is inestimable as the sole authentic connected narrative of the origins of the Church. But above all these claims on our attention it can urge a supreme one. It has come down to us as a portion of those sacred writings which are able to make men wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. It has, from the very beginning of Christian history, held a secure place in the Christian canon. The First Book of the treatise of which it is a substantive part, is, indeed, attested by Paul himself (I Tim. v. 18) as standing along with Deuteronomy among the Scriptures which convey the Word of God to man. And there is sufficient independent evidence of its own assured place in the same collection to preclude all hesitation in extending this attestation to it also.

Its internal characteristics justify the character thus ascribed to it. It is no ordinary history that it offers us. In the strictest sense of the word it is sacred history. It is even obviously written less in the interests of pure history than in those of religious edification. The interest Luke feels in the events he recounts, the emotions they arouse in him, communicate themselves to his narrative. He clearly seeks to produce the same emotions in his readers, to set before them examples for their imitation, to communicate to them a religious view of the history he narrates. The book takes its standpoint not from earth but from heaven. It essays to inform us not how the Church spread from Jerusalem to Antioch, and from Antioch to Rome, but how the risen Jesus has established His Church in the world and is fulfilling His promise to be with His followers to the end of time. As truly as the Apocalypse itself this Book draws aside the veil that we may see in the events of earth who are the real actors, to what end all is tending. This is revelation. As the vehicle of such a revelation, the Book of Acts takes its fitting place between the Gospels and Epistles, and we read it with no sense of incongruity in the complex scheme of the Word of God. He who reads it with the heart and understanding also will be led by it to know God better, will be more fully taught by it His power and purpose to save the world, and will be made to feel more profoundly that Jesus Christ is God over all, blessed for ever, and that God is in Him reconciling the world unto Himself. As he reads and ponders, it will be no fault of the Book’s if he does not set his seal to it as a book that speaks of God and leads to God, and that doubtless also came from God.

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