without any precise consciousness, give vent to their astonishment in general expressions, What can all this mean? But those who were utterly unsusceptible and light-minded, ridicule and reject what they are unable to comprehend.

The apostles held it to be their duty to defend the Christian community against the reproaches cast upon it by superficial judges, and to avail themselves of the impression which this spectacle had made on so many, to lead them to faith in Him whose divine power was here manifested. Peter came forward with the rest of the eleven, and as the apostles spoke in the name of the whole church, so Peter spoke in the name of the apostles. The promptitude and energy which made him take the lead in expressing the sentiments with which all were animated, were special endowments, founded on his natural character; hence the distinguished place which he had already taken among the disciples, and which he long after held in the first church at Jerusalem. "Think not," said Peter,' "that in these unwonted appearances you see the effects of inebriety. These are the signs of the Messianic era, predicted by the prophet Joel; the manifestations of an extraordinary effusion of the Spirit, which is not limited to an individual here and there, the chosen organs of the Most High, but in which all share who have entered into a new relation to God by faith in the Messiah. This Messianic era will be distinguished, as the prophet foretold, by various extraordinary appearances, as precursors of the last decisive epoch of the general judgment. But whoever believes in the Messiah has no cause to fear that judgment, but may be certain of salvation. That Jesus of Nazareth, whose divine mission was verified to you by the miracles that attended his earthly course, is the very Messiah promised in the Old Testament. Let not his ignominious

death be urged as invalidating his claims. It was necessary for the fulfilment of his work as the Messiah, and determined by the counsel of God. The events that followed his death are a proof of this, for he rose from the dead, of which we are

1 Bleek has correctly perceived traces of a Hebrew original in Acts ii. 24, where the connexion of the metaphor makes deσμoùs Toû laváтOL or bist, Psalm xviii. 5 and 6, which the Alexandrian renders by dives, according to the meaning of the word . See Bleek's review of Mayerhoff's Hist. Kritischer Einleitung in die hebräischen Schriften, in the Studien und Kritiken. 1836, iv. 1021.

all witnesses, and has been exalted to heaven by the divine power. From the extraordinary appearances which have filled you with astonishment, you perceive, that in his glorified state he is now operating with divine energy among those who believe on him. The heavenly Father has promised that the Messiah shall fill all who believe on him with the power of the divine Spirit, and this promise is now being fulfilled. Learn, then, from these events, in which you behold the prophecies of the Old Testament fulfilled, the nothingness of all that you have attempted against him, and know that God has exalted him whom you crucified to be Messiah, the ruler of God's kingdom, and that, through divine power, he will overcome all his enemies."

The words of Peter deeply impressed many, who anxiously asked, What must we do? Peter called upon them to repent of their sins, to believe in Jesus as the Messiah who could impart to them forgiveness of sins and freedom from sin,-in this faith to be baptized, and thus outwardly to join the communion of the Messiah; then would the divine power of faith be manifested in them, as it had already been in the community of believers; they would receive the same gifts of the Holy Spirit, the bestowment of which was simultaneous with the forgiveness of sins, and freedom from sin; for the promise related to all believers without distinction, even to all in distant parts of the world, whom God by his grace should lead to believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

A question may be raised, Whether by these last words Peter intended only the Jews scattered among distant nations, or whether he included those among the heathen themselves who might be brought to the faith? As Peter at a subsequent period, opposed the propagation of the gospel among the heathen, there would be an apparent inconsistency in his now making such a reference. But there is really no such contradiction, for the scruple which clung so closely to Peter's mind was founded only on his belief that heathens could not be received into the community of believers, without first becoming Jewish Proselytes, by the exact observance of the Mosaic law. Now, according to the declarations of the prophets, he might expect that in the Messianic times the heathen would be brought to join in the worship of Jehovah, so that this sentiment might occur to him consistently with

the views he then held, and he might express it without giving offence to the Jews. Yet this explanation is not absolutely necessary, for all the three clauses (Acts ii. 39) might be used only to denote the aggregate of the Jewish nation in its full extent; and we might rather expect that Peter, who had been speaking of the Jews present and their children, if he had thought of the heathen also, would have carefully distinguished them from the Jews. On the other hand, the description, "All that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call," appears too comprehensive to justify us in confining it to persons originally belonging to the Jewish nation. Hence, it is most probable, that in Peter's mind, when he used this expression, there floated an indistinct allusion to believers from other nations, though it did not appear of sufficient importance for him to give it a greater prominence in his address, as it was his conviction, that the converts to Christianity from heathenism must first become Jews.

CHAPTER II.

THE FIRST FORM OF THE CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY, AND THE FIRST GERM OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.

THE existence and first development of the Christian church rests on an historical foundation on the acknowledgment of the fact that Jesus was the Messiah-not on a certain system of ideas. Hence, at first, all those who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, separated from the mass of the Jewish people, and formed themselves into a distinct community. In the course of time, it became apparent who were genuine, and who were false disciples; but all who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah were baptized without fuller or longer instruction, such as in later times has preceded baptism. There was only one article of faith which formed the peculiar mark of the Christian profession, and from this point believers were led to a clearer and perfect knowledge of the whole contents of the Christian faith, by the continual enlightening of the

Holy Spirit. Believing that Jesus was the Messiah, they ascribed to him the whole idea of what the Messiah was to be, according to the meaning and spirit of the Old Testament promises, rightly understood; they acknowledged him as the Redeemer from sin, the Ruler of the kingdom of God, to whom their whole lives were to be devoted, whose laws were to be followed in all things; while he would manifest himself as the Ruler of God's kingdom, by the communication of a new divine principle of life, which to those who are redeemed and governed by him imparts the certainty of the forgiveness of sins. This divine principle of life must (they believed) mould their whole lives to a conformity with the laws of the Messiah and his kingdom, and would be the pledge of all the blessings to be imparted to them in the kingdom of God until its consummation. Whoever acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, received him consequently as the infallible divine prophet, and implicitly submitted to his instructions as communicated by his personal ministry, and afterwards, by his inspired organs, the apostles. Hence baptism at this period, in its peculiar Christian meaning, referred to this one article of faith, which constituted the essence of Christianity, as baptism into Jesus, into the name of Jesus; it was the holy rite which sealed the connexion with Jesus as the Messiah. From this signification of baptism we cannot indeed conclude with certainty that there was only one form of baptism. Still, it is probable that in the original apostolic formula no reference was made except to this one article. This shorter baptismal formula contains in itself every thing which is further developed in the words used by Christ at the institution of baptism, but which he did not intend to establish as an exact formula the reference to God, who has revealed and shown himself in and by the Son, as a Father and to the Spirit of the Father, whom Christ imparts to believers as the new spirit of life; the Spirit of holiness, who by virtue of this intervention is distinguished as the spirit of Christ. That one article of faith included, therefore, the whole of Christian doctrine. But the distinct knowledge of its contents was by no means developed in the minds of the first converts, or freed from foreign admixtures resulting from Jewish modes of thinking, which required that religious ideas should be stripped of that national and carnal veil with

which they were covered. As the popular Jewish notion of the Messiah excluded many things which were characteristic of this idea, as formed and understood in a Christian sense, and as it included many elements not in accordance with Christian views, one result was, that in the first Christian communities which were formed among the Jews, various discordant notions of religion were mingled; there were many errors arising from the prevailing Jewish mode of thinking, some of which were by degrees corrected, in the case of those who surrendered themselves to the expansive and purifying influence of the Christian spirit; but in those over whom that spirit could not exert such power, these errors formed the germ of the later Jewish-Christian (the socalled Ebionitish) doctrine, which set itself in direct hostility to the pure gospel.

Thus we are not justified in assuming that the Three Thousand who were converted on one day, became transformed at once into genuine Christians. The Holy Spirit operated then, as in all succeeding ages, by the publication of divine truth, not with a sudden transforming magical power, but according to the measure of the free self-determination of the human will. Hence, also, in these first Christian societies, as in all later ones, although originating in so mighty an operation of the Holy Spirit, the foreign and spurious were mingled with the genuine. In fact, in proportion to the might and energy of the operation, many persons were more easily carried away by the first impressions of divine truth, whose hearts were not a soil suited for the divine seed to take deep root and develop itself; and in outward appearance, there were no infallible marks of distinction between genuine and merely apparent conversions. The example of Ananias and Sapphira, and the disputes of the Palestinian and Hellenistic Christians, evince even at that early period, that the agency of the Spirit did not preserve the church entirely pure from foreign admixtures. It happened then, as in the great religious revivals of other times, that many were borne along by the force of excited feelings, without having (as their subsequent conduct proved) their disposition effectually penetrated by the Holy Spirit.

The form of the Christian community and of the public Christian worship, the archetype of all the later Christian