1. John follows Luke, and is not to be considered as an independent narrative.

2. Luke is already well known and only needs supplementing.

3. John's supplementary matter, with a single exception, consists only of personal reminiscences.

4. That exception is the philosophical prologue which adopts a great word from the rabbins, but fills it with a new and personal meaning.

5. John's Gospel is intended to complete the Gospel of Luke, and with this to constitute one historical narrative.

6. Its record of events and of discourses is so minute and exact that it can be the work only of the apostle John.

7. The origin of its Logos-doctrines must be referred, not to Ephesus and to the influence of Alexandrian philosophy there, but to Jerusalem and to the schools of the rabbins, where both John and Paul had studied.

8. The Logos-doctrine itself is absolutely needed to supplement the picture of Jesus as given us by the Synoptics, and it was substantially the teaching of Paul before John wrote his Gospel.

9. The divine aspect of our Lord's personality is as essential as the human aspect, and Christ is none other than God manifest in the flesh.

10. John's Gospel relieves Luke's from the charge of being a merely humanitarian picture of Christ's religion, and makes Christianity to be nothing less than a vital and personal union of the human spirit with the omnipresent and omnipotent Christ.

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES

WE pass to-day from the study of the Gospels to the study of the Acts of the Apostles, from the study of Christ's work FOR us to the study of Christ's work IN us and in his church.

The author of the Acts of the Apostles is Luke. We have plenty of external evidence to Luke's authorship in the testimonies of the church Fathers, Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Eusebius, testimonies which I need not narrate to you; but we have internal evidence also, with which all of you are more or less familiar, and which, when it is set forth in order, is exceedingly convincing.

Luke begins the Acts of the Apostles with a reference to the former treatise, and that former treatise, as it is addressed to Theophilus, just as the Acts is, makes it quite certain that Luke himself, and no other, is the author of the Acts as well as of the Gospel.

Then we have similarities of style in the Gospel and in the Acts which cannot possibly be accidental. It will perhaps interest those of you who are familiar with the Greek to know that we have the use of verbs compounded with prepositions, in Luke and in Acts, to an extent not at all paralleled by any other of the books of the New Testament. We have the use of the preposition σú, for example, to a remarkable extent, as we have not in the Gospel of Matthew, of Mark, or of John. While we have that preposition used in

Matthew only three times, we have that preposition used in the Gospel according to Luke twenty-four times, and in the Acts of the Apostles fifty-one times, showing that there is marked similarity of style in this particular. We have the Greek verb лорɛɛσda, to go, hardly used at all, used very sparingly indeed in other portions of the New Testament; but in Luke's Gospel we find it forty-nine times, and in the Acts of the Apostles thirty-eight times, showing that the peculiarities of the one are peculiarities of the other.

There are other connections of the Gospel and the Acts in the fact that the earlier portion of the Gospel, in which Luke seems to have material made ready to his hand, is Hebraistic in its style. He shows his faithfulness to his authorities by accepting the very words of the original, in many cases, while the latter portions of the Gospel are written in a more pure Greek. Now that is precisely the case with the Acts. The earlier portions of the Acts, which have to do with transactions within the bounds of the church in Palestine, are somewhat Hebraistic in their style; and the latter portion of the Acts, which narrates events of which Luke was in part an eye-witness, is written in Greek of a better style, a more classical Greek. Now this correspondence between the Gospel and the Acts tends to show that the same person was the author of both.

Then we find that there are striking coincidences between the speeches of Peter and Paul and James in the Acts and in the Epistles. We have from those same persons in each case not only the same general train of thought, but also expressions which indicate a

peculiar authorship. You remember that great work of Paley, "Hora Paulina," the object of which was to show that the Acts and the Epistles show wonderful correspondence; that the Acts confirms the Epistles and that the Epistles confirm the Acts; that there are remarkable agreements between them which would not have been possible if the Acts had not been a historical document, and if, on the other hand, the Epistles had not been written by the very men to whom they are attributed. Here are proofs that Luke was the author of the Acts, and proof also that Luke's work is veritable history.

The date at which the Acts of the Apostles was written I think can be determined within a narrow limit, since Luke was the author. It is a continuation. of the Gospel of Luke, or rather it is a work by the same author with the intent of making it a supplement to the Gospel; and, being a supplement to the Gospel, we are warranted in saying, as we said in discussing the Gospel itself, that in this book Luke represents Paul. Luke does not write at his own motion, or upon his own responsibility. The apostle Paul furnishes a large part of the material; the apostle Paul sanctions the work; the apostle Paul probably supervises the work; and, therefore, we are warranted in believing that, as the Gospel according to Luke was probably written toward the close of Paul's imprisonment at Cæsarea, the Acts of the Apostles was probably written before the close of Paul's first imprisonment at Rome. As we may date the Gospel some time not after the year 59, so it is proper to date the Acts of the Apostles not much before the year 61, or toward the end of it.

K

You remember that the Acts, although it narrates Paul's journey to Rome, narrates Paul's preaching at Rome, speaks of Paul's imprisonment at Rome for two whole years, speaks of Paul's addresses to the Jews at Rome, yet does not give an account of the close of Paul's imprisonment at Rome. It is very certain that the Acts of the Apostles was written before the close of Paul's imprisonment. It is almost impossible that the Acts of the Apostles should have been written after the close of Paul's imprisonment; for, if Luke had known of the issue of that imprisonment, that remarkable event which formed so natural a close of the apostle Paul's life would undoubtedly have been itself narrated and described. The fact that he leaves Paul at the end of that two years' imprisonment, without indicating when that imprisonment terminated and what the result of it was, is to my mind evidence that the Acts of the Apostles must have been written before the close of that imprisonment, and that the only reason Luke does not tell us what the result was in that case is simply that he did not know, simply because the result had not yet taken place. So I think we may put the date of the Acts of the Apostles before the close of the year 61, as we put the date of the Gospel according to Luke before the year 59.

Now this fact will throw considerable light upon the circumstances in which the Acts was written. You must remember that Paul had had already twenty years of experience in preaching and speaking. That imprisonment at Cæsarea was apparently ordered by divine providence, like the imprisonment of John Bunyan in Bedford jail, in order that he might, in