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SCRIPTURE READINGS.

EXPOSITION OF ACTS I.

NATURE OF THE ACTS-AUTHENTICITY-STYLE-DEDICATION-THE SENSES THEIR TESTIMONY-CHRIST'S PROMISE-ITS FULFILMENT— PROOF OF HIS RESURRECTION-RESTORATION OF THE KINGDOMCHRIST'S ASCENSION-HIS PROMISED DESCENT- CHURCH-UPPER ROOM-PETER-BISHOPS APOSTLE-LOTS.

WE begin here the regular reading of one of the most interesting, not to say instructive, books in the New Testament Scriptures. The Acts of the Apostles, or, as it might be translated, "The Transactions of the Apostles," occupies a place intermediate between the Gospels, which are the account of the personal ministry of Jesus, and the Epistles, which are the instruction of the infant churches in the peculiar and distinctive doctrines of the Gospel of Christ. The Acts of the Apostles form an inspired fragment of ecclesiastical history, to show us how the prerogatives with which the apostles were invested in the Gospels, were carried out in practical development; and secondly, how the truths they were commissioned to preach were preached by them, and received by others; and what was the success that attended the preaching of these truths in the various

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sections of Asia Minor, which they chiefly visited. We cannot, therefore, conceive a more important privilege than that we should have the ecclesiastical history of a few years after the ascension of our blessed Lord, written out under infallible superintendence; that we might know how strictly everything that our Lord said was fulfilled, and every lesson that he commanded to be taught was taught by his servants whom he sent in his name. The Acts of the Apostles are supposed to have been written about the year 64; that is, somewhere about thirty years after our Lord's crucifixion. We find unquestionable proof that the book was written by the evangelist Luke. His name is not mentioned; but all history, without a single break, accepts of him as the author of it; every section of the church universal has accepted this book as an inspired book. And, indeed, apart from all this, it bears internal evidence of its inspiration, its authenticity and its genuineness so unequivocal, that it is impossible for a candid mind long to doubt it. It can be proved that this book was written by the evangelist Luke, who was a physician and a thorough scholar, evidently in some degree of Gentile connexion. About fifty words that occur in this book occur only in the Gospel of St. Luke; and were, evidently, words peculiar to him. We know that every preacher, or writer, or speaker, has a habit of using some words and some phrases more than others; so much so, that you detect his style by the peculiarity of his phrases. Now, you have only to analyse this book, and compare it with the Gospel of St. Luke, in order to see that the one that wrote the Gospel is beyond all doubt the author of the Acts of the Apostles. It has always been remarked, that the style of Luke in the Gospel and Acts

is more the style of a thorough scholar. The commencement of his Gospel is written in the purest Attic Greek; and the Acts of the Apostles, where he does not record or report speeches or addresses, indicate one who handled the Greek tongue as a native or a Gentile only could do it. I mention these facts merely to give you some idea of the evidence, and only an idea, that exists for the authenticity and genuineness of this most interesting book.

He dedicates the book to Theophilus; who seems to have been a person of some rank and eminence, and a Christian; his name meaning "love of God." He says that the former treatise that he made was "of all that Jesus began to do and to teach," that is, his Gospel, "until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen;" that is, it closes with Christ's ascension, and the completeness of the record of that most wondrous and blessed biography. He then states here, in the third verse, that "Jesus showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs," that were irresistibly conclusive. Let us mark here the fact, that the senses are accepted as infallible proofs of things that came within their range or scope, and therefore, what they saw and heard the senses truly attested. In the Church of Rome they say, the senses are deceived every Sunday on the altar; that what looks like bread, and tastes like bread, and handles like bread, and corrupts like bread, is nevertheless, in spite of the senses saying so, the flesh and blood of the Son of God. Now the evangelist Luke here accepts the senses as the most infallible proof of the reality and identity of the risen Christ and Saviour Jesus. If the senses can

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