Sec. i. Trustworthiness.
that an unknown person came to Auburn from New York, and you wished to find out whether he was an impostor or not. In our country we are exposed to frequent attempts at imposition, which can often be detected by a few questions ; and you would probably ask him about his experiences on his journey from New York to Auburn. Now suppose you had been informed that he had come not along the direct road, but by a long detour through Boston, Montreal, and Toronto, and had thus ar- rived at Auburn ; and suppose that you by questioning elicited from him various facts which suited only a route through Schenectady and Utica, you would condemn the man as an impostor, because he did not know the road which he pretended to have travelled. But suppose further that it was pointed out by some third party that this stranger had really travelled along the direct road, and that you had been misinformed when you supposed him to have come by the round-about way, your opinion as to the stranger's truthfulness would be instantly affected. Precisely similar is the case of Acts as a record of travel ; generations and centuries have been attempting to apply it to the wrong countries. I must speak on this point confidently and uncompromisingly, for the facts stand out so clear and bold and simple that to affect to hesitate or to profess any doubt as to one's judgment would be a betrayal of truth.
I know the difficulties of this attempt to understand rightly a book so difficult, so familiar, and so much mis- understood as Acts. It is probable that I have missed the right turn or not grasped the full meaning in some cases. I am well aware that I leave some difficulties unexplained, sometimes from inability, sometimes from mere omission.
io The Acts of the Apostles. Chap. I.
But I am sustained by the firm belief that I am on the right path, and by the hope that enough of difficulties have been cleared away to justify a dispassionate historical criticism in placing this great writer on the high pedestal that belongs to him.
2. DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CRITICISM ON ACTS. With regard to the trustworthiness of Acts as a record of events, a change is perceptible in the tendency of recent criticism. Setting aside various exceptional cases, and also leaving out of sight the strictly " orthodox " view, which accepts Acts as truth without seeking to compare or to criticise (a view which in its simplicity and completeness needs neither defence nor examination), we may say that for a time the general drift of criticism was to conceive the book as a work composed in the second century with the intention of so representing (or rather misrepresenting) the facts as to suit the writer's opinion about the Church ques- tions of his own time. All theories of this class imply that the atmosphere and surroundings of the work are of the second-century type ; and such theories have to be founded on a proof that the details are represented in an inaccurate way and coloured by second -century ideas. The efforts of that earlier school of critics were directed to give the required proof; and in the attempt they displayed a misapprehension of the real character of ancient life and Roman history which is often astonishing, and which has been decisively disproved in the progress of Roman historical investigation. All such theories belong to the pre-Mommsenian epoch of Roman history : they are now impossible for a rational and educated critic ; and they hardly survive except in popular magazines and novels for the semi-religious order.
Sec 2. Development of Modem Criticism on Acts. II
But while one is occasionally tempted to judge harshly the assumption of knowledge made by the older critics where knowledge was at the time difficult or impossible, it is only fair also to emphatically ackn' wledge the debt we owe them for practising in a fearless and independent spirit the right and much-needed task of investigating the nature and origin of the book.