aside certain false and untrue accounts of our' Lord, which evil men and false teachers had: spread abroad; thus St. Luke himself begins his Gospel: "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among' us, even as they delivered them unto us, which · from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word; it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee: in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed." Such was the purpose of St. Luke in writing his such the human helps which he had only let us ever remember, that there was in all this a higher and divine purpose, that of God Himself, hereby brought about,—the comfort and teaching of His Church in all ages,—a higher and divine help, that of God the Holy Ghost, guarding from all error, and leading into all truth, the mind and pen of St. Luke. For this we must: most surely believe of all the books of holy Scripture, that (however they may be, in some

:

Gospel;

the work of men,-men frail and erring in themselves, yet that) they are also, or rather,

the work of God the Holy Ghost, and so are all-true, all-perfect; and thus, that the Gospel of St. Luke is not so much the Gospel of St. Luke, or of St. Paul, or of those others, “the eye-witnesses and ministers of the word," as the Gospel of the Holy Spirit of God; and so is to be received and believed as the word of God, not merely as the word of man.

And what is thus said of the Gospel of St. Luke may be said also of the Acts of the Apostles. St. Luke wrote the Acts of the Apostles to continue, as it were, the history which he had begun in the Gospel. Thus he himself refers to the Gospel at the very beginning of the Acts of the Apostles: "The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up. Almighty God willed that the history of the first years of the Church; the first preachings of the apostles; the first deaths of His martyrs; the first persecutions of the Jews and of the heathens; the faith, charity, zeal, purity of the early Church, in the days of her first love; Almighty God willed that these should not pass away and be forgotten, nor the record of these be changed, or corrupted, by human error or human frailty, but consigned for

ever to all ages, as a part of His own word. Thus Almighty God, by His Spirit, guided the first historian of the Christian Church into the truth, and set the first history of the Christian Church among the holy Scriptures, that Christians in all ages might see in the Acts of the Apostles a model of Christian faith, of Christian discipline, and of Christian life; might know what is that apostolical doctrine and fellowship, in which it is our duty and privilege to continue stedfastly, even as it was the duty and privilege of the early Christians.

It is not until we reflect how entire a blank the first years of the Church would be to us, but for what is preserved to us in the Acts of the Apostles, that we in any due measure realize the value of the gift which God, by St. Luke, hath given to us. Only call to mind some few of the many subjects of this book, and thus learn to estimate its witness to the Christian faith and life, such as it once was. The descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost; the discourse of St. Peter, (the very first discourse preached in the Church of Jesus Christ;) the unity of the Church, when "they that gladly received His word were baptized, . . . and they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and

all that believed were together, and had all things common." The ordination, first of the deacons, and after, of the elders or priests; the martyrdom of St. Stephen; the mission of the apostles to confirm in Samaria by laying on of hands; Philip and the eunuch; the conversion of St. Paul; the call of Cornelius; the miraculous delivery of St. Peter from prison; the mission of Paul and Barnabas to the Gentiles; and all that we read of St. Paul, his preaching, his labours, his journeys, his dangers. Such are some of the varied subjects of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. It need not be said how greatly they confirm our faith as Christians and as Churchmen. Ours is thus shewn to be one with the Church of the holy apostles; to have the same faith, the same sacraments. Would that there were the same holiness of life, the same unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, the same love, the same charity, the same selfdenial, the same zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of man. That were to be apostolic indeed, not only to hold the faith which the apostles held, or to minister the sacraments which the apostles ministered; but to live as the apostles lived, to serve God with apostolic

service, to love the brethren with apostolic charity, to chasten ourselves with apostolic selfdenial.

And surely to look back to the inspired records of the early Church is our comfort and strength,

no less than our duty. We yearn, it may be, for Christian sympathy, or we are cast down as we see so little signs and traces all around us of the Communion of Saints. We are tempted to faint and to despair; to murmur, it may be, because our lot hath not been cast in this or that age, in this or that branch of the Church; as if, in other circumstances, or with other means of grace, we could have discharged our Christian duties and perfected holiness, whereas now we are unable to do so. This is no doubt a common snare and device of our spiritual enemy, whereby to lead us to sloth and indifference: to sloth as regards our own progress in the spiritual life; to indifference as regards God's truth. And thus we too often go on to omit practical duties, grow careless as regards the exercises of self-discipline and self-denial, and lose our keen sense of the great need and necessity of even the least article of our Christian faith.

Now so far as this temper arises from a wrong and sinful despair, it may be a stay and comfort