discourse in the Acts would not have taken more than six or seven minutes to deliver,(1) and it is impossible to suppose that what is there given can have been the whole speech delivered on many of the occasions described. For instance, is it probable that King Agrippa who desires to hear Paul, and who comes "with great pomp" with Berenice to do so, should only have heard a speech lasting some five minutes. The Author himself tells us that Paul was not always so brief in his addresses as any one might suppose from the specimens here presented.(2) It is remarkable, however, that not the slightest intimation is given that the speeches are either merely substantially reported or are abridged, and their form and character are evidently designed to convey the impression of complete discourses. If the reader examine any of these discourses, it will be clear that they are concise compositions, betraying no marks of abridgment, and having no fragmentary looseness, but, on the contrary, that they are highly artificial and finished productions, with a continuous argument. They certainly are singularly inadequate, many of them, to produce the impressions described; but at least it is not possible to discover that material omissions have been made, or that their periods were originally expanded by large, or even any, amplification. If these speeches be regarded as complete, and with little or no condensation, another strong element is added to the suspicion as to their authenticity, for such extreme baldness and brevity in the declaration of a new religion,
requiring both explanation and argument, cannot be conceived, and in the case of Paul, with whose system of teaching and doctrine we are well acquainted through his Epistles, it is impossible to accept such meagre and onesided addresses, as representations of his manner. The statement that the discourses are abridged, and a mere résumé of those originally delivered, however, rests upon no authority, is a mere conjecture to account for an existing difficulty, and is in contradiction to the actual form of the speeches in Acts. Regarded as complete, their incongruity is intensified, but considered as abridged, they have lost in the process all representative character and historical fitness.
It has been argued, indeed, that the different speeches bear evidence to their genuineness from their suitability to the speakers, and to the circumstances under which they are said to have been spoken; but the existence of anything but the most superficial semblance of idiosyncratic character must be denied. The similarity of form, manner, and matter in all the speeches is most remarkable, as will presently be made more apparent, and the whole of the doctrine enunciated amounts to little more than the repetition, in slightly varying words, of the brief exhortation to repentance and belief in Jesus, the Christ. that salvation may be obtained,(1) with references to the ancient history of the Jews, singularly alike in all discourses. Very little artistic skill is necessary to secure a certain suitability of the word to the action, and the action to the word; and certainly evidence is reduced to a very low ebb when such agreement as is presented in the Acts is made an argument for authenticity. Not only is the consistency of the sentiments uttered by
the principal speakers, as compared with what is known of their opinions and character, utterly disputed, but it must be evident that the literary skill of the Author of the Acts was quite equal to so simple a task as preserving" at least such superficial fitness as he displays, and a very much greater amount of verisimilitude might have been attained, as in many works of fiction, without necessarily involving the inference of genuineness.
It has been freely admitted by critics of all schools that the author's peculiarities of style and language are apparent in all the speeches of the Acts,(1) and this has been so often elaborately demonstrated that it is unnecessary minutely to enter upon it again. It may not be out of place to quote a few lines from the work of one of the ablest and most eminent advocates of the general authority of the Acts. Speaking of the speeches of Paul, Lekebusch says:—"The speeches of our Book, in fact, are calculated, perhaps more than anything, to excite doubt regarding its purely historical character. But here everything depends upon an unbiassed judgment. We are sufficiently free from prejudice to make the admission to recent criticism that the speeches are not verbally given as they were originally delivered, but are composed by the author of the Acts of the
Apostles. Schleiermacher, certainly, has confidently asserted their originality. He thinks: 'If the speeches were separately reported they could not but appear just as we find them in the Acts of the Apostles.' But his remarks, however ingenious and acute they may be, do not stand the test of a thorough examination of the individual speeches. No one who impartially compares these, one with another, and particularly their style with the mode of expression of the Author in the other sections, can help agreeing with Eichhorn, when, in consonance with his view regarding the uniform character of the Acts, on the grounds quoted, page 14, he ascribes the composition of the speeches to the writer from whom the whole book in all its parts proceeds."(1) To this impartial expression of opinion, Lekebusch adds a note:—"In saying this, it is naturally not suggested that our author simply invented the speeches, independently, without any historical intimation whatever as to the substance of the original; the form only, which certainly is here very closely connected with the substance, is hereby ascribed to him."(2) Lekebusch then merely goes on to discuss the nature of the author's design in composing these speeches. The reasons given by Eichhorn, which Lekebusch quotes at "page 14," referred to above, had better be added to complete this testimony. After referring to the result of Eichhorn's "very careful examination" of the internal character of the Acts, Lekebusch says:—"He finds, however, that, 'throughout the whole Acts of the Apostles there prevails the same style, the same manner, the same method and mode of expression' (ii. 35). Not