Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/649



(That Luke was also regarded by the Fathers as an apostle, is shown by the fact that, in the Synopsis ascribed to Athanasius, it is said, 'that the gospel of Luke was dictated by the apostle Paul, and written and published by the blessed apostle and physician, Luke.')

HIS WRITINGS.

But a far more valuable testimony of the character of Luke is found in those noble works which bear his name in the inspired canon. His gospel is characterized by remarkable distinctness of expression and clearness of conception, which, with that correctness of language by which it is distinguished above all the other books of the New Testament, conspire to make it the most easy to be understood of all the writings of the New Testament; and it has been the subject of less comment and criticism than any other of the sacred books. From the language which he uses in his preface, about those who had undertaken similar works before him, it would seem that though several unauthorized accounts of the life and discourses of Jesus were published before him, yet neither of the other gospels were known by him to have been written. He promises, by means of a thorough investigation of all facts to the sources, to give a more complete statement than had ever before been given to those for whom he wrote. Of the time when he wrote it, therefore, it seems fair to conclude, that it was before the other two; but a vast number of writers have thought differently, and many other explanations of his words have been offered. Of his immediate sources of information,—the place where he wrote, and the particular person to whom he addresses it, nothing is known with sufficient certainty to be worth recording.

Of the Acts of the Apostles, nothing need be said in respect to the contents and object, so clear and distinct is this beautiful piece of biography, in all particulars. Its date may be fixed with exactness at the end of the second year of Paul's first imprisonment, which, according to common calculations, is A. D. 63. It may well become the modern apostolic historian, in closing with the mention of this writing his own prolonged yet hurried work, to acknowledge the excellence, the purity, and the richness of the source from which he has thus drawn so large a portion of the materials of the greatest of these Lives. Yet what can he add to the bright testimonies accumulated through long ages, to the honor and praise of this most noble of historic records? The learned of eighteen centuries have spent the best energies of noble minds, and long studious lives, in comment and in illustration of its clear, honest truth, and its graphic beauty; the humble, inquiring Christian reader, in every age too, has found, and in every age will find, in this, the only safe and faithful outline of the great events of the apostolic history. The most perfect and permanent impression, which a long course of laborious investigation and composition has left on the author's mind, of the task which he now lays down, exhausted yet not disgusted, is, that beyond the apostolic history of Luke, nothing can be known with certainty of the great persons of whose acts he treats, except the disconnected and floating circumstances which may be gleaned by implication from the epistles; and so marked is the transition from the pure honesty of the sacred record, to the grossness of patristic fiction, that the truth is, even to a common eye, abundantly well characterized by its own excellence. On the passages of such a narrative, the lights of critiicism, of Biblical learning, and of contemporary history, may often be needed, to make the sometimes unconnected parts appear in their true historic relations. The writer who draws therefrom, too, the facts for a connected biography, may, in the amplifications of a modern style, perhaps more to the surprise than the admiration of his readers, quite protract the bare simplicity of the original record, "in many a winding bout of linked" wordiness, "long drawn out,"—but the modernizing extension and illustration, though it may bring small matters more prominently to the notice and perception of the reader, can never supply the place of the original,—to improve which, comment and illustration are alike vain. When will human learning and labor perfect the exposition and the illustration of the apostolic history? Its comments are written in the eternal hope of uncounted millions;—its illustrations can be fully read only in the destiny of ages. This record was the noble task of "the beloved physician;" in his own melodious language—"To give knowledge to the people, of salvation by remission of sins through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the day-*spring from on high hath visited us,—to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,—to guide feet in the way of peace!"