assumed towards the Apostle of the Gentiles by such men as Justin Martyr, Papias, Hegesippus, and the author of the Clementines; but we have already devoted too much space to this subject, and here we must reluctantly leave it.
The steps by which Christianity was gradually freed from the trammels of Judaism and became a religion of unlimited range and universal fitness were clearly not those stated in the Acts of the Apostles. Its emancipation from Mosaism was not effected by any liberal action or enlightened guidance on the part of the elder Apostles. At the death of their Master, the Twelve remained closely united to Judaism, and evidently were left without any understanding that Christianity was a new religion which must displace Mosaic institutions, and replace the unbearable yoke of the law by the divine liberty of the Gospel. To the last moment regarding which we have any trustworthy information, the Twelve, as might have been expected, retained all their early religious customs and all their Jewish prejudices. They were simply Jews believing that Jesus was the Messiah; and if the influence of Paul enlarged their views upon some minor points, we have no reason to believe that they ever abandoned their belief in the continued obligation of the law, and the necessity of circumcision for full participation in the benefits of the Covenant. The author of the Acts would have us believe that they required no persuasion, but anticipated Paul in the Gospel of uncircumcision. It is not within the scope of this work to inquire how Paul originally formed his views of Christian universalism. Once formed, it is easy to understand how rapidly they must have been developed and confirmed by experience amongst
the Gentiles. Whilst the Twelve still remained in the narrow circle of Judaism and could not be moved beyond the ministry of the circumcision, Paul, in the larger and freer field of the world, must daily have felt more convinced that the abrogation of the Law and the abandonment of circumcision were essential to the extension of Christianity amongst the Gentiles. He had no easy task, however, to convince others of this, and he never succeeded in bringing his elder colleagues over to his views. To the end of his life, Paul had to contend with bigoted and narrow-minded opposition within the Christian body, and if his views ultimately triumphed, and the seed which he sowed eventually yielded a rich harvest, he himself did not live to see the day, and the end was attained only by slow and natural changes. The new religion gradually extended beyond the limits of Judaism. Gentile Christians soon outnumbered Jewish believers. The Twelve whose names were the strength of the judaistic opposition one by one passed away; but, above all, the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Christian community secured the success of Pauline principles and the universalism of Christianity. The Church of Jerusalem could not bear transplanting. In the uncongenial soil of Pella it gradually dwindled away, losing first its influence and soon after its nationality. The divided members of the Jewish party, scattered amongst the Gentiles, and deprived of their influential leaders, could not long retard the progress of the liberalism which they still continued to oppose and to misrepresent. In a word, the emancipation of Christianity was not effected by the Twelve, was no work of councils, and no result of dreams; but, receiving its first great impulse from the genius and the energy of Paul, its ultimate
achievement was the result of time and natural development.
We have now patiently considered the "Acts of the Apostles," and although it has in no way been our design exhaustively to examine its contents, we have more than sufficiently done so to enable the reader to understand the true character of the document. The author is unknown, and it is no longer possible to identify him. If he were actually the Luke whom the Church indicates, our results would not be materially affected; but the mere fact that the writer is unknown is obviously fatal to the Acts as a guarantee of miracles. A cycle of supernatural occurrences could scarcely, in the estimation of any rational mind, be established by the statement of an anonymous author, and more especially one who not only does not pretend to have been an eye-witness of most of the miracles, but whose narrative is either uncorroborated by other testimony or inconsistent with itself, and contradicted on many points by contemporary documents. The phenomena presented by the Acts of the Apostles become perfectly intelligible when we recognize that it is the work of a writer living long after the occurrences related, whose pious imagination furnished the apostolic age with an elaborate system of supernatural agency, far beyond the conception of any other New Testament writer, by which, according to his view, the proceedings of the Apostles were furthered and directed, and the infant Church miraculously fostered. On examining other portions of his narrative, we find that they present the features which the miraculous elements rendered antecedently probable. The speeches attributed to
different speakers are all cast in the same mould, and betray the composition of one and the same writer. The sentiments expressed are inconsistent with what we know of the various speakers. And when we test the circumstances related by previous or subsequent incidents and by trustworthy documents, it becomes apparent that the narrative is not an impartial statement of facts, but a reproduction of legends or a development of tradition, shaped and coloured according to the purpose or the pious views of the writer. The Acts of the Apostles, therefore, is not only an anonymous work, but upon due examination its claims to be considered sober and veracious history must be emphatically rejected. It cannot strengthen the foundations of supernatural Religion, but, on the contrary, by its profuse and indiscriminate use of the miraculous it discredits miracles, and affords a clearer insight into their origin and fictitious character.