PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Acts of the Apostles, Vol. 1
Stokes, George Thomas · 136,331 words · 162 reading sections
Fourth Series, 1890-91.
Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals. Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error. The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the t…
286 wordsSECTION 2Preface.
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. BY THE REV. G. T. STOKES, D.D., PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, AND VICAR OF ALL SAINTS', BLACKROCK. NEW YORK: A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON, 51 EAST TENTH STREET (NEAR BROADWAY). 1891. This volume contains an exposition of the Acts of the Apostles down to…
912 wordsSECTION 3Preface.
[5] Ceillier, _Hist. des Auteurs Ecclésiastiques_, i., 403. [6] Mr. Harris's discovery is not the first find of this ancient apologist in modern times. The Armenian Mechitarites of Venice published what they called two sermons of Aristides in 1878; which Cardinal Pitra, the learned librarian of the Vatican, reprint…
844 wordsSECTION 4Preface.
[7] The apologists of the second century will be found in a collected shape in Otto's _Corpus Apologetarum_, in nine vols. (Jena, 1842-72). Most of those mentioned above will be found in an English shape in Clarke's Ante-Nicene Library. See also Harnack in _Texte und Untersuchungen_, bd. i., hft. i. (Leipzig, 1882)…
739 wordsSECTION 5The Election Of Matthias.
I have to acknowledge the kind assistance of the Rev. H. W. Burgess, LL.D., who has patiently read all my proofs, and called my attention to many a solecism or mistake which might have otherwise disfigured my pages; and of Mr. W. Etienne Phelps, B.A., deputy keeper of Primate Marsh's Library, who has compiled the index…
317 wordsSECTION 6First Recorded Miracle And First Persecution.
ACTS ii. 1-4. Origin and History of Pentecost--Gnosticism and Antinomianism-- Modern Aspect of Ancient Heresies--Ancient Union and Modern Divisions of Christendom--Jeremy Taylor's Prayer-- The Fiery Tongues--Protest against Persecution and Penal Laws in Religion--Ussher and Baxter, Mistakes of-- Death-Scene of Qu…
286 wordsSECTION 7Gamaliel And His Prudent Advice.
ACTS iv. 1-3, 5-7. St. Peter's Teaching in Solomon's Porch and the Captain of the Temple--The Romans and Jewish Law--Discovery of Temple Tablet--The Sadducees and the Work of Opposition--Sadduceism and Modern Theories--Sceptics and Religious Intolerance-- Pliny and the Martyrs--Trial of the Apostles--Constitution …
318 wordsSECTION 8St. Stephen'S Defence And The Doctrine Of Inspiration.
ACTS vi. 1-4. The Election of the Seven a Crisis in Church History--Date of St. Stephen's Martyrdom--Occasion of it--Primal Relation of Judaism to Christianity--Not Mutually Exclusive--Illustrated by those of First Methodists to Church of England--Tyranny and Deposition of Pilate--Multiplication of Christians led…
316 wordsSECTION 9The Apostles And Confirmation.
Testimony of Church of Lyons to St. Stephen's Martyrdom-- Earliest Celtic Martyrdoms and Celtic Assemblies-- Christmas Day and St. Stephen's Day--Christmas Season and Three Classes of Martyrs--Dies Natalis and the Liturgies--Immediate Cause of St. Stephen's Death-- Locality of the Martyrdom--Newly-discovered Chur…
262 wordsSECTION 10_The Origin And Authority Of The Acts Of The Apostles._
ACTS viii. 18, 19. Change in Confirmation at Reformation--Yet the Rite remained Essentially the Same as of Old--Importance of Tertullian's Testimony for its Primitive Origin-- Cyprian's and Augustine's View--Relation of Cyprian to Tertullian--Imposition of Hands United with Prayer in Ancient and Modern Church--Ut…
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[11] See a copious account of this strange second-century forgery in Dr. Gwynne's article on Thecla in the fourth volume of the _Dictionary of Christian Biography_. Dr. Salmon, in his _Introduction to the N.T._, chap. xix., gives a most interesting description of the apocrypha Acts of the Apostles, which even the …
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[12] The Irish people are very Oriental in the tenacity with which they retain ancient traditions, transmitting them intact to posterity. Abundant instances have proved this, the traditions having been perpetuated in some cases for five hundred years or more. The following case has come under the writer's notice in…
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[13] See two articles on St. Columbanus and his library in the _Expositor_ for June and August 1889. [14] Dr. Salmon, in his _Introd. N.T._, pp. 48-54, describes the Muratorian Fragment. But this is not the whole of the argument which can be derived from the Epistle of the Lyonnese Christians, which is given to us …
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[15] See Dr. Sanday's _The Gospels in the Second Century_, and Dr. Salmon's _Introd. N.T._, pp. 204-208. If we were writing a critical treatise, we should of course have to enter upon the full discussion of many questions which might here be raised. The Acts of the Apostles in its latter chapters plainly claims to be…
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Let us reflect a little. The manner in which the early Christians learned the facts and truths of Christianity was quite different from that which now prevails. If men wish now to learn about original Christianity they resort to the New Testament. In the age of Polycarp they resorted to the living voice of the elders w…
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[16] The latest enquiries and discoveries confirm this view, which may be deduced from a study of the apostolic Fathers, with which should be compared the new second-century documents belonging to Ephesus and Rome discussed in _Texte u. Untersuch_. of Gebhardt and Harnack for 1888. Their titles are the tract _De Al…
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But then, some one may come forward and say, is not this a very uncomfortable position for us? Would it not have been much more easy and consoling for Christians to have had the whole canon of Scripture infallibly decided by Divine authority once for all, so as to save all doubts and disputations on the whole subject? …
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"There are who, darkling and alone, Would wish the weary night were gone, Though dawning morn should only show The secret of their unknown woe: Who pray for sharpest throbs of pain To ease them of doubt's galling chain: 'Only disperse the cloud,' they cry, 'And if our fate be death, give light and let us die.' …
675 wordsSECTION 19_The Conversations Of The Great Forty Days._
"They therefore, when they were come together, asked Him, saying, Lord, dost Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? And He said unto them, It is not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set within His own authority. But ye shall receive power, when the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and y…
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[20] The book of Enoch was translated into English by Archbishop Laurence, and was first published about seventy years ago. There is an exhaustive article on the subject in the second volume of the _Dictionary of Christian Biography_, written by Professor Lipsius of Jena. [21] The book of Jubilees has never been p…
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[22] The strongest argument, from a mere literary point of view, for the existence of a supernatural element in Christianity and primitive Christian literature will be derived from a contrast between the Jewish literature of the period of the Christian era and the New Testament. Take, for instance, the book of Jubi…
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[23] The most curious instance of the essential identity of the nature deities of the West and East will be found in Mithraism. The worship of Mithras was originally the worship of the sun. It started from India, passed into Persia, thence found its way to Asia Minor, and about 70 B.C. was introduced into Rome, whe…
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(_d_) Again and again has history verified and amply justified the wisdom of the Master's reply, "It is not for you to know times or seasons." It was justified in apostolic experience. The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians is a commentary on our Lord's teaching in this passage. The Christians of Thessalonica imbibed …
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(_e_) The experiences of Thessalonica have been often repeated down through the ages till we come to our own day. I remember a curious instance that I once read of exactly the same spirit, and exactly the same method of cure, as St. Paul used, in the case of an Egyptian monastery in the fifth century. The monks were th…
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III. Christ, after He had reproved the spirit of vain curiosity which strikes at the root of all practical effort, then indicates the source of their strength and the sphere of its activity. "Ye shall receive power after the Holy Ghost is come upon you." They were wanting then, as yet, in power, and the Holy Ghost was …
364 wordsSECTION 26_The Ascension Of Christ, And Its Lessons._
"When He had said these things, as they were looking, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight."--ACTS i. 9. In this passage we have the bare literal statement of the fact of Christ's ascension. Let us now consider this supernatural fact, the Ascension, and meditate upon its necessity, and even n…
790 wordsSECTION 27_The Ascension Of Christ, And Its Lessons._
[27] The incarnation and the ascension are, in this respect, very much on a level in St. Paul's writings. The incarnation and birth of our Lord are referred to incidentally, but only incidentally, in Rom. i. 3; Gal. iv. 4; 1 Tim. iii. 16; yet the facts of the birth and incarnation must have occupied a great share o…
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[28] See Archbishop Trench on the Draw-net in _Notes on the Parables_, p. 145, 10th ed. [29] We now live so fast that it may perhaps be necessary to explain that the _Unseen Universe_ was a book written some ten or eleven years ago by two eminent scientists, showing how that it was needful, on the principles, of m…
888 wordsSECTION 29_The Ascension Of Christ, And Its Lessons._
At any rate, the risen Saviour, if He remained upon earth, must have chosen some one place where His presence and His personal glory would have been manifested. Now let us contemplate, and work out in some detail, the results which would have inevitably followed. The place chosen by our Lord as His visible dwelling-pla…
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Or again, let us take an illustration from the ecclesiastical sphere. M. Renan is a writer who has depicted the early history of the Church from a sceptical point of view. He has done so with all the skill of a novelist, aided by the resources of immense erudition. Before Renan became a sceptic he was a Roman Catholic,…
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[30] The line of thought here worked out was originally suggested to me by Canon Liddon's sermon on "Our Lord's Ascension the Church's Gain," in his first series of University sermons. V. We have now seen how the ascension was needful for the Church, by rendering Christ an ideal object of worship for the whole human…
1,489 wordsSECTION 32_The Election Of Matthias._
[32] The original authority for the story of Telemachus is Theodoret's _Eccles. Hist._, v. 26. It is vigorously told by Gibbon in the thirtieth chapter of his _Decline and Fall_. [33] The doctrine of the sanctity of human life was unknown under paganism. Tacitus tells us, about the year A.D. 61, how that Pedianus …
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II. Then again, how carefully, even in His delays, God honours the elder dispensation, though now it had grown old and was ready to vanish away. Christianity had none of that revolutionary spirit which makes a clean sweep of old institutions to build up a new fabric in their stead. Christianity, on the contrary, rooted…
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The heathens reproached Christians with the novelty of their faith, and then the early Christians replied by pointing to history, which proved that the Jewish religion was far older than any other, maintaining at the same time that Christianity was merely the development of the Jewish religion, the completion and fulfi…
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[38] Epiphanius, _On Weights and Measures_, ch. xiv. [39] The traditions about the upper chamber are given at length in Fr. Quaresmius, _Terræ Sanctæ Elucidatio_, t. ii., p. 119 (Antwerp, 1639), with which may be compared Bingham's _Antiquities_, bk. viii., ch. i., sec. 13; Mede's _Discourse Of Churches_ in his _W…
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IV. And then we have the record of the apostolic election, which is rich in teaching. We note the person who took the first step, and his character, so thoroughly in unison with that picture which the four Gospels present. St. Peter was not a forward man in the bad sense of the word, but he possessed that energetic, fo…
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Let us pause a little to meditate upon an objection which might have been here raised. Why fill up what Christ Himself left vacant? some short-sighted objector might have urged; and yet we see good reason why Christ may have omitted to supply the place of Judas, and may have designed that the Apostles themselves should…
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V. The address of St. Peter led the Apostles to practical action. He laid the basis of it in the book of Psalms, the mystical application of which to our Lord and His sufferings he recognises, selecting passages from the sixty-ninth and the one hundred and ninth Psalms as depicting the sin and the fate of Judas Iscario…
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The two selected candidates were Joseph Barsabas and Matthias, neither of whom ever appeared before in the story of our Lord's life, and yet both had been His disciples all through His earthly career. What lessons for ourselves may we learn from these men! These two eminent servants of God, either of whom their brethre…
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[44] The dignified self-restraint of the Acts is nowhere more manifest than in its reference to Judas Iscariot. The only notice bestowed upon him is connected with the election of Matthias. Papias was a writer of the beginning of the second century. He knew some of the Apostles and early disciples, and gathered di…
297 wordsSECTION 41_The Pentecostal Blessing._
"And when the day of Pentecost was now come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder (or distributing themselves), like as of fire; …
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[45] In the last lecture I have already given the reference to Lightfoot's and Mede's works where this point is fully worked out. [46] The same view has practically been taught by some modern sects, who have proclaimed that all of the Old Testament and the whole of our Lord's teaching till He died were intended for…
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Then, too, to take it from another point of view, what a loss in generalship, in Christian strategy, in power of concentration, results from our unhappy divisions? The united efforts made by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and Greeks, are indeed all too small for the vast work of converting the heathen world if they were…
1,134 wordsSECTION 44_The Pentecostal Blessing._
There appeared, too, tongues, separate and distinct, sitting upon each of them. The outward and visible sign manifested on this occasion was plainly typical of the new dispensation and of the chief means of its propagation. The personality of the Holy Ghost is essentially a doctrine of the new dispensation. The power a…
1,167 wordsSECTION 45_The Pentecostal Blessing._
A separate and distinct tongue, too, sat upon each individual assembled in the upper room,--significant of the individual character of our holy religion. Christianity has a twofold aspect, neither of which can with impunity be neglected. Christianity has a corporate aspect. Our Lord Jesus Christ came not so much to tea…
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III. Lastly, in this passage we find another external proof of the Spirit's presence in the miraculous gift of tongues. That gift indicated to the Apostles and to all ages the tongue as the instrument by which the gospel was to be propagated, as the symbol fire indicated the cleansing and purifying effects of the Spiri…
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[52] The speculations and discussions now rife concerning hypnotism ought to teach modesty of assertion as to what is or is not possible. On the 28th of March there appeared in an eminent medical authority, the _Lancet_ newspaper, a review of a number of works on hypnotism, acknowledging the wonders of the subject,…
1,654 wordsSECTION 48_The Pentecostal Blessing._
[54] It is a completely mistaken notion, which no one would cherish who had read history with a full-orbed mental eye, realizing the past with its circumstances, that Latin and Greek superseded all other languages throughout the empire. Local dialects and languages continued to flourish all the time, save amongst …
441 wordsSECTION 49_St. Peter'S First Sermon._
"But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spake forth unto them, saying, Ye men of Judæa, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and give ear unto my words."--ACTS ii. 14. This verse contains the opening words of St. Peter's address to the multitude who were roused to wo…
662 wordsSECTION 50_St. Peter'S First Sermon._
I. The congregation assembled to listen to this first Gospel discourse preached by a human agent was a notable and representative one. There were Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia and in Judæa,--or, as an ancient expositor (Tertullian) puts it, in Armenia[57] and Cappadocia,--in Pontus…
1,008 wordsSECTION 51_St. Peter'S First Sermon._
[60] The history of the Jewish settlement in the south of Arabia is very little known by the average student of the Acts, and yet it is a wonderful confirmation of its accuracy both here and in the account of the Ethiopian eunuch. This colony existed in Arabia long before the Christian era. They claimed, indeed, to…
737 wordsSECTION 52_St. Peter'S First Sermon._
One of the most convincing proofs of the truth of the New Testament is the identity of character we behold in the representations given of St. Peter by writers who produced their books quite independently of each other. St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Galatians long prior to any of the Gospel narratives. Yet St. Paul…
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In this respect, indeed, we recognise the greatness, the divinity of the Master Himself towering above the noblest of His followers; above even Peter himself, upon whom He pronounced such an eulogium, and bestowed such privileges. Our Lord Jesus Christ taught this universality of Christianity, and expressly recognised …
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IV. Let us look somewhat farther into the matter of this earliest Christian sermon, that we may learn the apostolic view of the Christian scheme. Some persons have asserted that the earliest Christians were Ebionites,[62] and taught a system of doctrine akin to modern Unitarianism. This theory can best be tested by an …
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[62] The term Ebionite is thus well explained by the Rev. J. M. Fuller in the _Dict. Christ. Biog._, vol. ii., p. 25: "The term Ebionism expresses conveniently the opinions and practices of the descendants of the Judaizers of the apostolic age, and is very little removed from Judaism. Judaism was for them not so mu…
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[64] See the article on "Apollinaris the Younger" in the _Dict. Christ. Biog._, vol. i., for a concise account of the Apollinarian heresy. St. Peter's interpretation again of the Psalms recognised in David's words a prophecy of the resurrection: "Neither wilt Thou give Thy Holy One to see corruption,"--a rendering o…
536 wordsSECTION 57_The Firstfruits Of Pentecost._
"Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what shall we do? And Peter said unto them, Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghos…
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The evidence of the historian Tacitus is conclusive upon this point. He lived and flourished all through the time when St. Paul's ministry was most active. He was born about the year 50, and had every opportunity of becoming acquainted with the facts concerning the execution of Christ and the rise of Christianity, as t…
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II. There are many other points of interest in this passage; let us take them one by one as they offer themselves. The people, seized by conviction and in acute pain of conscience, cried out, "What shall we do?" St. Peter replied, "Repent, and be baptized." Repent is the Apostle's first rule,--contrasting very strongly…
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[67] This point has been admirably discussed by Dr. Salmon in his sermon on "Present Salvation" in his volume of sermons styled _The Reign of Law_, pp. 295-99. [68] This controversy between the Antinomian party and the London Nonconformists of the orthodox sort is now almost unknown, and yet it created great excit…
706 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.