04.01. PREFACE.

PREFACE. THE rise and early progress of any remarkable movement must ever have an interest for the thoughtful and the inquiring. We see then some of the original labourers at work. We learn something of the springs of the movement. And, whilst noticing results, we can trace the causes which conduced to its success. If that is true of the many remarkable movements of which this world has been the theatre, what shall we say of the rise and early progress of Christianity? That must ever be to the Christian a study of intense interest. A movement like it has never been known. It started into life with all the energy of a giant, just when to human thoughts the mission inaugurated by its Founder had received its death-blow. It spread without human patronage, and without the aid of human power. The great ones of the earth where it arose, and those who wielded the sword of government in different countries to which it spread, were none of them at first in its favour, but for the most part manifestly hostile. Yet it progressed. Threats, imprisonments, scourgings, tumults, legal prosecutions, and even the fear of martyrdom, were alike insufficient to cow its supporters, or to check their ardour in propagating their views. It was intensely aggressive. It admitted of no compromise with any creed in the world. It claimed to be the true faith; and, as such, alone offering that which was needful for everlasting salvation. It had confessedly truth in common with Judaism, yet was jealous of any Judaising teaching. It alone, it proclaimed, could furnish any inquirer with the full revelation vouchsafed by God, for the Church is the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15).

We have read in the Gospel of Luke of the birth and life on earth of its Founder. The birthplace, however, of the movement recorded in the Acts was really an upper room in Jerusalem, its time was the feast of Pentecost, and its first company numbered one hundred and twenty souls. But the number of its adherents in that city swelled to upwards of three thousand ere its first day had closed. And that remarkable result was effected simply by preaching the Gospel of the grace of God. Soon the company numbered five thousand. Priests and people in Jerusalem and Judsea, and subsequently men and women of wealth and position elsewhere, came under the sound of the preached Word, felt its power, and bowed to it as the truth of God. Never before had people of all classes and various creeds in such numbers given heed to a message from heaven. That a history should be written of such a movement need not surprise us. But, as with another remarkable movement fifteen centuries earlier, only one history has in each case come down, written in the latter case by an eyewitness, and in the former by a contemporary of that which he records.

Profane history of their several dates, as far as preserved to our day, knows little or nothing of the marvels that the inspired historians record. Nor is this to be wondered at. For as with Israel at the Exodus, so with Christians in apostolic times, the conflict lay between them and the ruling powers of their day. Naturally, chroniclers of those times, who recorded the victories of their rulers, were little likely to hand down records of their defeats. And such there were in connection with the struggles against the emancipation of the Israelites, as well as against the rise and spread of Christianity. An authentic history, however, we have of both these epochs. Inspired histories we have to call them, because written under the guidance and by the direction of the Holy Ghost.

Remarkable indeed, as we have called it, was the first movement we have referred to, because it was the springing up, as it were, suddenly of a nation into political existence, with a country in prospect to which they were marching. Yet the second movement was the more remarkable, since it was the taking out of nations of a people to be gathered only to the Lord. In the former case it was the dawn of political life of a nation, born, as it were, in a day. In the latter it was the calling out of an assembly, limited to no country, peculiar to no race, embracing men and women of different nationalities, formerly practising diverse religious rites, and the blending them into one company, uniting all by the tie of spiritual brotherhood, and knitting them close together as members of that one body of which the Head was the crucified One in heaven. Marvellous were some facts in connection with each. The Red Sea had been divided for the passage of the Israelitish host, and the waters of the Jordan were arrested to let the people go over dryshod. That night in the sea and that day in the river channel were surely never forgotten by those who were present. And night after night, too, in the wilderness, a food, hitherto unknown on earth, and never again supplied after Israel rested on the west of Jordan, fell around their camp wherever it was pitched. Yet more marvellous were some of the facts connected with the latter movement. Galilsean fishermen were heard suddenly speaking in languages they had never learnt. They spoke intelligibly, and doubtless fluently. They spoke in the ears of those in whose mother tongue they were expressing themselves. These heard, they marvelled, and attested that the men were speaking in the tongue in which each listener was born. Other marvels there were; for, what had never been known, the shadow of Peter passing along the street was eagerly desired by sick ones to overshadow them, and clothes from Paul’s body conveyed healing virtue to such as had need of it.

Further, the Apostles were imprisoned ; the doors were locked; the keepers outside were on guard; yet the whole company, the Twelve, were brought out by angelic agency, without the knowledge or suspicion of even one of the warders, who were found in the morning to be guarding an empty gaol ! And the Apostles, thus set free, were found continuing their mission, publicly speaking in the court of the Temple "all the words of this life." The rulers now doubted, and well they might, whereunto that would grow. Then Peter, arrested, and imprisoned by the king, and chained to two soldiers to keep him safe, was set free in the hours of night without one of his guards being aware of it. He walked out of the prison unchallenged, and, accompanied by the angel, passed out by the iron gate into the city, which had opened of its own accord. Bolts and bars, soldiers and warders, were alike powerless to detain those whom the Lord would set free. Divine power was working for and with the Christians.

Another startling fact was recorded. The relentless persecutor of the new faith was suddenly converted, and became a most zealous champion of the truth, confounding the Jews as he reasoned with them. The work still spread wider and wider. Gentiles were converted, and Christian assemblies began to be formed outside the land of promise. What the rabble of Thessalonica declared was indeed true - the world was being turned upside-down.

Then at Philippi Paul and Silas were imprisoned, and their feet made fast in the stocks; and though their backs had been lacerated by scourging, unjustly and unlawfully administered, and their wounds remained undressed, yet their spirits were free, and prayers and praises at night poured forth from their lips. The prisoners heard them. Suddenly an earthquake took place. The doors were opened. Every one’s bonds were loosed. The prisoners were free. Yet none escaped. Of liberty, so dear to the captive, no one availed himself. And, stranger than all, the jailor was found prostrate before those two whose feet he had made fast in the stocks, anxiously inquiring of them the way of salvation. Nor did he ask in vain. The enemy would, if possible, stop the work in Philippi. It burst out afresh, where none would have looked for it - inside the walls of that city’s prison.

Then, too, the energy of faith, as displayed in the Acts, must not be forgotten. We see the disciples, when threatened with the rulers at Jerusalem, kneeling together in prayer for boldness to speak the Word. And Paul, stoned one day at Lystra, and drawn out of the city for dead, departed on the next day to preach the Gospel in Derbe. Nothing damped their energies or chilled their ardour. And what shall we say of manifestations of grace - as Stephen praying for his murderers, and Paul and Silas preserving the jailor from impending self-destruction? Ere closing, we must call attention, first, to that touching scene of men, women, and children on their knees on the shore at Tyre, under the open canopy of heaven, commending Paul and his company to the Lord - an open-air prayer-meeting on no common occasion; and, next, to that last meal on board the vessel within sound of breakers, yet not in sight of land, when Paul encouraged the toiling, half-famished company to take food, his faith in the promise of God imparting confidence to all on board. No romance could be more thickly studded with incidents of. the deepest interest than this short, simple, yet truthful narrative of St. Luke, destitute as it is of any rhetorical flourish or wordy embellishment. A history he has, under God, given us which we venture to say is without parallel in the ordinary writings of men. It is the history of the power of the Word of God, that sword of the Spirit wielded by men under the guidance of the Holy Gbost - miracles attesting in the first place the commencement of a new dispensation, and then confirming the word of the first preachers of the Christian faith. To this book, so fruitful in instruction for the labourer and for the ordinary disciple as well, the reader’s attention is sought to be directed in the following pages. And may it be that a fresh study of the Acts shall increase in the former his confidence in the power of the Word, and minister to the latter refreshment and comfort, as he recalls the care of the Lord evinced for all those given to Him by His Father.