of Christianity, such as we find in the apostolic epistles.  Our Saviour established his church only in its fundamental principles and ordinances.  The work of publishing his gospel and organizing churches among Jews and Gentiles he committed to his apostles.  Before his crucifixion he taught them that the Holy Ghost could not come (that is, in his special and full influences as the administrator of the new covenant) till after his departure to the Father:  “It is expedient for you that I go away:  for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you.”  John 16:7.  “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.  And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning.”  John 15:26, 27.  Now we have, in the Acts of the Apostles, first an account of the fulfilment by the Saviour of his promise that he would send the Holy Ghost; then a record how the apostles, thus qualified, obeyed the Saviour’s command to preach the gospel to Jews and Gentiles—­a record not, indeed, complete, but sufficient to show the manner and spirit in which the work was performed.  Some truths, moreover, of the highest importance the Saviour gave only in outline, because the time for their full revelation had not yet come.  John 16:12, 13.  Such were especially the doctrine of his atoning sacrifice on Calvary with the connected doctrine of justification by faith; and the divine purpose to abolish the Mosaic economy, and with it the distinction between Jews and Gentiles.  We have, partly in the Acts and partly in the epistles, an account of the unfolding of these great truths by the apostles under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and of the commotions and contentions that naturally accompanied this work.  The practical application of the gospel to the manifold relations of life, domestic, social, and civil, with the solution of various difficult questions arising therefrom, was another work necessarily devolved on the apostles, and performed by them with divine wisdom for the instruction of all coming ages.  The book of Acts and the epistles ascribed to the apostles being such a natural sequel to the Redeemer’s work, as recorded by the four evangelists, a briefer statement of the evidence for their genuineness and authenticity will be sufficient.

I. The Acts of the Apostles. 2.  According to Chrysostom, First Homily on Acts, this book was not so abundantly read by the early Christians as the gospels.  The explanation of this comparative neglect is found in the fact that it is occupied with the doings of the apostles, not of the Lord himself.  Passing by some uncertain allusions to the work in the writings of the apostolic fathers, the first explicit quotation from it is contained in the letter heretofore noticed, chap. 2:4, from the churches of Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, written about A.D. 177, in which they