them (Matt. xxviii. 19, 20). All were called back by repentance to their duties and future obedience to the law, which all had broken. "He that believeth, and is baptised, shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark xvi. 16); not because he does not believe and be baptised, but because he will not accept the remission or purging away of the sins he had already committed. In conformity with this, the apostles preached and acted, promising remission of sins to all those, both Jews and Gentiles, who believed and were baptised (Acts ii. 38; x. 43; xiii. 38; xxvi. 18); and they remitted or retained-declared forgiven. all who believed, and unforgiven all who did not believe in the name of the only-begotten Son of God.

THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

THE object of this Book has been variously described. We should like the student to read Alford,* as he has seized upon the main points of the writer, and placed them in a striking light. Hawest judiciously observes, that "it contains not only a recapitulation of the gospel, but a continuation of the life of Christ, the fulfilment of His predictions, and, in a certain sense, a supplement by means of those things which, by the Paraclete, He imparted in a fuller measure to the previously less established disciples. (See specially John xvi. 12, 13). It contains also the root and stem of all those matters treated of in the Epistles. The Gospels treat of Christ, the Head; the Acts exhibit the occurrence of like things in His body, which is quickened by His Spirit, harassed by the world, defended and exalted by God. A summary of this is contained in Eph. i. 20, 22. And the departure of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit give the Acts a closer resemblance to the Epistles than to the Gospels." The two great

points to which this selection of facts seems subservient are, that the Christian religion is of divine origin, and that it was intended for the benefit, not of the Jewish nation alone, but of every nation on the earth. That Luke did not design to write a general history of the Christian Church, during the first

* "How to Study the New Testament."

"The Critical English Testament," vol. ii., p. 1.

thirty years after Christ's ascension, and of the apostles, who planted it, as the title of the book might lead one to suppose, is sufficiently evident from the omissions in his work. He passes by all the transactions in the church of Jerusalem, after the conversion of Paul, though the apostles continued for some time in Palestine. He also omits to notice the propagation of Christianity in Egypt, or in the countries bordering on the Euphrates and the Tigris, Paul's journey into Arabia, the state of Christianity in Babylon (1 Peter v. 13), the foundation of the church at Rome, which had already received an epistle from Paul, several of Paul's voyages, and many other matters, of which he could not possibly be ignorant, as may be seen in Lardner.* Upon similar grounds we may conclude that it was not intended to be a full history of the ministry and sufferings of all the apostles, in the propagation of Christianity. The names of some of the apostles never occur in it, and little is said of Peter and John. It did not matter that the labours of this or that apostle should be preserved; the truth of the Christian religion, and its introduction amongst the Gentile nations, appear to have been designed, and these important facts are fully shown.

CHAPTER I.

"And falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out."-Ver. 18.

MATTHEW (ch. xxvii. 5) gives an account of the traitor's death, and Luke here relates what happened aftewards. Matthew having related that Judas

* "Supplement," vol. i., chap. viii., sect. 9.

"departed, and went and hanged himself," Luke, knowing that all suicides, who hang themselves, are cut down sooner or later, does not state the fact, but subjoins the short supplementary narrative. The rope being cut, or untied, "falling headlong," or rather, "falling on his face, he burst asunder," etc. It was very natural, for Luke, if not as an evangelist, yet as a physician, to relate, by way of parenthesis, the pathological fact here recorded. It is known that in cases of violent and painful death, there is usually an effusion of lymph, or of lymph mixed with blood, into the cavities of the chest and abdomen; and if the body is kept till putrescence takes place, a gas is evolved from the fluid in such quantity as to distend enormously, and sometimes to rupture the peritoneum and abdominal muscles. This has been observed in bodies hung on gibbets in England; and it would take place much more speedily in warmer climates.

But "he burst asunder " may mean, he made a noise; cracked, as the verb elakēse often means, so that the Greek expression may mean nothing more than that a relaxation of the sphincter ani had taken place, and that a copious evacuation of the contents of the alvus had followed, the aorist being sometimes rendered by the preter-pluperfect tense in English.

CHAPTER V.

Ver. 11-17.

THESE verses, as they follow in our Bibles, are evidently intermingled and confused, and have been variously arranged by commentators. Townsend adopts A. Clarke's arrangement, which is as follows: verses 11, 13, 14, 12, 15, 16, 17; and this dis

tribution of the verses removes the difficulties and obscurities which now present themselves in the arrangement of the text.

CHAPTER VII.

"The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran."-Ver. 2. See the remarks on Gen. ch. xii. ver. 1.

"Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans, and dwelt in Charran; and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land."-Ver. 4.

From Gen. xi. 26, 32, and chap. xii. 4, it appears that Terah, Abraham's father, lived sixty years after Abraham migrated into the land of Canaan, for he was born in the seventieth year of Terah's age (Gen. xi. 26); and made the migration when seventy-five years old (Gen. xii. 4); and, if we add to these, seventy years, he migrated in the hundred and forty-fifth year of Terah's age; and since Terah lived two hundred and five years (Gen. xi. 32), there remain seventy, during which Terah lived after the departure of Abraham. To remove this difficulty the commentators have pursued various courses. Knatchbull, Capellus, and others, think that the Hebrew text of Gen. xi. 32 is to be emended from the Samaritan version; and the number ccv. to be changed into cxlv. But the number seems to have

been altered in the Samaritan MS. in order to correspond with the chronology. That the Samaritans have in other places interpolated the text has been ascertained beyond doubt. Bloomfield, following Michaëlis, Krauser, Morus, Rosenmüller, and others, thinks that Stephen followed the tradition of the Jews; but Bishop Lloyd is of opinion that what is said in