ON THE HISTORICAL TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 205 



deserved tlie name of scholar could entertain any doubt on the 

 point or hesitate to acquiesce in the practically universal con- 

 demnation. The book ot" the Acts was condemned as a compila- 

 tion made in the second century from older records ; the book 

 was declared, tliough founded on older sources, to be so inter- 

 polated and so strongly coloured as to distort the historical view 

 and to impart an entirely false atmosphere and false suggestion 

 to the facts, even when these facts were in part taken from older 

 written authorities ; and many people seemed even to hold that 

 the supposed compiler of the book in the second century had 

 actually invented some of the facts which he stated. The only 

 ■approach to trustworthiness was wliere the compiler had failed 

 to change his older written authority, and had left some scrap 

 of earlier writing which could readily be distinguished from 

 his own poor stuff. 



The case is now altered. Some considerable parts of the book 

 are now universally admitted to deserve perfect credence, and 

 -even to stand on the highest level of liistorical authority, as 

 written either by a thoroughly well-informed person, or even 

 by an educated eye-witness. At the very least, it is now allowed 

 that most of the second half of the book can be accepted as 

 entirely historical. The more conservative scholars do not now 

 hesitate to champion the whole book as written by one who was 

 .an eye-witness or the intimate personal friend of eye-witnesses, 

 a trusted and admiring follower and coadjutor and adviser of 

 the Apostle Paul, and they do not hesitate to accept the book 

 .as being what the very old tradition declares it to be, the nar- 

 rative written by St. Luke, the physician and evangelist. They 

 regard it as being, as it purports to be, the second part of an 

 historical work of which the Third Gospel is the first part : 

 the intention and plan of either part of this great historical 

 work is not to be gathered from itself alone. The entire 

 work in its two parts must be studied together as a single 

 whole ; and it is even maintained by some, among whom the 

 present speaker ventures to claim a place, that the work was 

 unhnished. Now, a man who has the genius to conceive the 

 plan of such a work as this, does not, and cannot, abandon 

 it half-finished ; he must work at it until he completes it, or 

 ^mtil — he dies. If the work of Luke was left unfinished, the 

 sole reason that can be thought of as possible, was his death — 

 .and, to all appearance, his premature and unexpected death. 

 That such an event was quite probable, appears from the tone 

 •of the book. It looks out over a storm of persecution : it is 

 written by a person who aims at defending Christianity by an 



