We are struck with the marked difference of Acts I-V, not merely from the later chapters, but also from Luke's First Book, the Gospel. In composing his Book I, he had formal works of a historical kind to use for his authorities {Luke I i) ; and he followed them very closely, not giving scope to his own method of narration or of grouping. But these formal works seem all to have ended either with the death or the ascension of the Saviour ; and the most obscure and difficult period for a historian writing about 80-85 A-D« was the time that immediately succeeded the death of Jesus. Luke was dependent here on informal narratives, and on oral tradition ; and, if we be right in our view that he did not live to put the last touches to his work, we may fairly suppose that the most difficult period was left the least perfect part of the whole. But we must content ourselves here with this slight indication of a view that would require much minute argument to state properly. There is a marked resemblance between I-V and XIX. In both, episodes that savour of popular fancy stand side by side with Lukan work of the best kind.
The first distinct step in development from the primitive condition of the Church, when it was a mere small and
Sec. 3. Appointment of Stephen and the Seven. 373
almost unorganised community, was due to the pressure of poverty. In Jerusalem very poor Jews were numerous, and many of them had become Christian. Hence from the beginning the Church had to contend against a chronic state of want among its adherents. Probably we are apt to find a more communistic sense than Luke intended in II 44, IV 32 ; for II 4, IV 35 indicate judicious charity, and even the action of Barnabas in IV 37 looks more like charity than communism : x he and others sold their posses- sions and gave the money in trust to the Apostles for the good of the Church. In later years, as the Church spread, the pressure of need in Jerusalem acted as a bond to unite the scattered congregations in active ministration (pp. 49 f., 288) ; and at the beginning it stimulated the primitive Church to originate a better organisation.
The difficulties in which the Church was placed, which would have killed a weakly life, only stimulated its vigour and its creative energy. This creative vitality is to the historian the most interesting side of the early Church ; it was free from dead conservatism ; it combined the most perfect reverence for its earliest form with the most perfect freedom to adapt that form to new exigencies ; it did not stifle growth on the plea that it must remain exactly as it was. It was growing so rapidly that it burst through its earliest forms, before they could acquire any binding force, or fix themselves in the prejudices of its members. This free untrammelled expansion was the law of its life, and the Divine reality of its being. In later times, on the contrary, many of its adherents have maintained that its
1 The story of Ananias points more to communism. Yet even here Peter's speech regards the act of Ananias as a purely volun- tary one, though V 2 seems to represent it almost as a duty.
3 74 Chronology of Early Church History. Chap. XVI.
Divine life lies in its preserving unchanged from the beginning the form that was prescribed for it. Thus the view taken in Acts is that the Church's Divine character lies in the free unceasing growth of its form and institu- tions ; but the common view of later times has been that its Divine character lies in the permanence and unchange- ability of its form from the beginning onwards.
At first Luke represents the superintendence and dis- tribution of these charities as undertaken solely by the Apostles, who soon found that " it was not meet that they should forsake preaching and perform the ministration at tables" (VI 2). Moreover, in the pressure of claims and accumulation of duties, complaint was made that the widows among the Hellenist Jews were neglected in favour of the native Hebrews. It was therefore arranged that a new class of officers should be instituted, — for whom no name is here given, but who were the origin out of which the " Deacons " of the developed Church arose.