THE LITERARY MARVELS OF ST. LUKE. 



181 



But now we come to contrasts \vith events in our Lord's b"fe ; 

 for both apostles very rightly refused the proffered homage. 

 There is only the sUghtest account of the ancestry, and none 

 at all of the birth or death of either of these apostles. The 

 antecedents of each, shortly before he began his work of pro- 

 claiming the Gospel, had been sad and humihating. Peter had 

 denied his Master in His time of deepest trial, as we have just 

 seen, and Paul had savagely persecuted the weak infant Church, 

 and had taken a leading part in the death of the first martyr, 

 Stephen (Acts vii, 58 ; viii, 1). Both had been unwilhng to 

 undertake the work of preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, 

 and both were granted a special vision, and a divine message 

 ordering them to obey (x, 9-16 ; xxvi, 9-20). 



The events in our Lord's Ministry to which these doubled 

 records call our attention, either by simihtude or by contrast, 

 are well known, and need not be enumerated. 



Threefold Reminders. 



Not only, however, are Gospel incidents recalled to the reader's 

 memory by the narration of isolated events and also by doubled 

 records in the Acts ; but our author has adopted an even more 

 elaborate plan. The Acts and the Gospel of St. Luke resemble 

 each other in containing triphcations emphasizing the main 

 subject of the book to which they belong. Those in the Acts 

 also point back to events in our Lord's Ministry, each of them 

 corresponding with a triphcation or triphcations in the Gospel 

 of St. Luke. We shall only consider those parallel to the six 

 in the Crucifixion section which we have already investigated ; 

 see right-hsind column of the Table, p. 175. 



It is thus claimed that the methods of St. Luke's two books 

 are exceedingly harmonious and elaborate. At the same time, 

 the arrangements are so very skilfully carried out that they 

 are not apparent without considerable investigation. Can 

 we wonder that divinely inspired writings need careful study 

 before all their beauty and earnestness are fully revealed ? 



We shall now examine each of these triphcations, Nos. (15) 

 to (20) in the Acts in detail, in order to demonstrate the 

 existence of the very close parallehsms with Nos. (21) to (26) 

 in the third Gospel (see Table, p. 175). 



